Author: Martin

Let’s Prepare for 3GSM / Mobile World Congress 2008

Good preparation is everything, especially for the 3GSM / Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2008. I am sure there will be lots of events happening in and around the congress/exhibition and as always it will be a bit difficult to keep track of all of them and select the interesting ones. This is why I thought I’d open a Wiki for everyone to share information about events, parties, job offers/seekers, apartment sharing, etc., etc.

It’s open for everyone, no registration required for editing. If you like the idea, bookmark the site and check regularly. If you know of an event or if you are the event organizer, consider leaving a note and link on the Wiki. If you organize an event but don’t want to create a web page for it feel free to create a new page on the Wiki for the details.

I already have one job seeker whom you might be able to help out:

Booth Hostess / Event Organizer

A friend of mine is looking for a job as booth hostess,
event organizer, or similar during the congress. She’s fluent in English,
French, Italian and German. She’s a proficient Internet and wireless
technologies user so she’ll be able to represent your company in a professional
manner. For her resume, please send me a quick email to gsmumts (at) gmx.de

Oh yes, and before I forget the Wiki has RSS feeds for new and updated pages which makes keeping track easier.

If you like the idea, please spread the word on your blog, by eMail, word of mouth, etc. 🙂

Mobile Browsers Should Include Transcoder Selection

I get a lot of web links lately on my mobile phone either in web pages, Twitter, Jaiku or via eMail. Sometimes I would like to take a look at these pages right away on the mobile instead of with a computer later-on. What usually keeps me from doing that is that the links point to full web pages which often overload my mobile web browser. Some people are nice and send their links via esyURL, which detects if the link is accessed from a mobile browser and then transcodes the page accordingly. But that’s the exception rather than the norm. So what I would need is a way to control it myself. Mobile browsers could offer a menu when clicking on a link with a special button (thing right mouse button on a PC) with a list of transcoders such as Mowser, Google and Mippin that return a mobile friendly version of the page behind the link.

Not difficult to do at all. Who will be the first one?

The Prepaid Wireless Internet Wiki is Evolving

As many of you know I am a frequent traveler in Europe and finding ways to stay connected while on the move has become sort of a passion. 2007 was definitely the year when prepaid SIM cards for accessing the Internet via GSM and UMTS networks became fashionable. At some point there were so many offers out there that it was difficult to keep track. So I started the Prepaid Wireless Internet Access Wiki to put down my knowledge and to invite others to do the same.

It has worked very well, the Wiki has been growing ever since. I even found some hot tips myself: France, not really on the afterburner in the mobile domain now has two prepaid Internet access offers and I am using one of them on a daily basis when I am in the country. And in Germany, my AldiTalk SIM card has been replaced by a Congstar SIM as the network operator makes all the difference. This is the power of the web! Sharing information and getting good tips for it in return. Thanks to all of you who keep the Wiki updated. Looking forward to the next tip!

Android 3G phone as a Wifi access point?

About a year ago I’ve written a blog post about how nice it would be if Nokia N-series phones with 3G and Wifi could be used as a Wifi access point. The post keeps getting a lot of hits via search engines and a lot of comments have been left until the comments section was closed automatically to reduce comment spam. Looks like I am not the only one thinking about such a feature. A year later a solution or rather workaround seems to have surfaced at least for some Windows Mobile devices. These days I am wondering if Google’s Android platform for mobile devices might be the choice for some people to really implement such a feature!?

So why on Android? The answer is Open Source! Windows Mobile, S60 and other mobile phone operating systems are closed source. Application developers can only use the Application Programming Interface (API) of the operating system which simply does not allow programmers to do such low layer things as reconfiguring the Wifi chip, setting up a system wide DHCP and DNS proxy and to interconnect the Wifi interface with the 3.5G interface. But with Android, things are different. The operating system is Linux so the source code and programing tools to modify the operating system are available. So as they say in the video below at the end, "start composing"!

Oh, by the way, there are already some open source mobile devices out there, the Nokia Internet Tablets (N770, N800, N810). Their operating system called Memo is also based on Linux and there is lots of activity in the filed. The latest version of the software even ships with an Xterm so deep diving without installing additional software is possible. There are even some tools ported from mainstream Linux to tweak the Wifi chip. Won’t help much on these devices for a Wifi/3.5G access point since the Internet tablets do not have a 3.5G Interface. Nevertheless it shows the possibilities.

Let’s see who gets there first, closed source or open source. Where do you place your bets?

SNCF is now .mobi

Sncfmobi
Bienvenue, SNCF in the mobile world! This December, SNCF has launched their .mobi mobile portal for travelers to look up train times and to order tickets. I’ve been used to this service from other train companies for years and I am glad to finally see a similar service in France now as well. Even though there seems to be an advertisement cooperation in place with Bouygues Telecom the service is based on HTML and usable on all wap 2.0 capable mobiles. Well done, SNCF, thank you!

Next task: Please upgrade your vending machines to accept international credit cards so I don’t have to queue up every time I have bought a ticket online (and please tell RATP, too…). A sorrow I share with many foreign travelers in France!

Via Fullblog

My Crazy Phone Numbers

As both my private and my business life is pretty international I would estimate that 80% of my calls are international these days. Most of these calls are carried over VoIP for some of the distance. Interestingly, that has some strange consequences for the phone number that the other end is shown. Some examples:

Business calls: I use a SIP VoIP client on the PC and the SIP network of my company for most business calls. To reduce cost, my company has a lot of voice gateways deployed in different countries. The IP network thus transports the VoIP call to the closest media gateway and then releases the call to the public circuit switched network. As a result the caller always sees a local number instead of my real number. Nice to hide the fact that you are not actually in the country. However, the number can not be called back.

For private calls I use Skype a lot. Skype does similar things and has gateways in many countries to release the call to the public telephone network as close to the destination as possible. Again a mysterious local number is shown (e.g. +491234). Most people are quite surprised to see such a number.

When I am in Germany and have to call a mobile phone abroad I use one of the many alternative PSTN operators. Again the number that is shown looks funny and has nothing to do with my real number.

And when I am out and about and want to call abroad from the mobile I use the services of Rebtel which lets me call a national number and then forwards the call internationally at a fraction of the cost of a direct call from the mobile. Again, same story with the calling number being displayed on the other end.

So why is there a number displayed at all at the other end if it is just fictuous? Nobody ever heard of CLIR?

P.S.: I wonder if there is a law prohibiting media gateways in a country to send the international number from a different country!?

P.P.S.: For the moment I seem to be the exception. So most people these days pick up the phone and say: “The number looks funny, this must be you, Martin!”. Sort of an alternative caller ID…

Wifi Printing becomes En Vougue

Wifiprint1
Recently, I had to get a new printer as the old one is slowly wearing out and an integrated scanner/copier would be a nice thing, too. Quite some things have changed since I last went to the computer store to buy a printer. Half of the printer/scanner/copier solutions starting from €120.- had built in Wifi so it can be used by all computers in the household. Looks like the Wifi chip has finally become cheap enough to make it into these sorts of devices. I wonder when/if digital cameras will be equipped with Wifi as well.

Wifiprint2
After some back and forth I decided to go for an HP C7280 for around 270 euros. A really impressive device with lots of functions. Setup was straight forward, input of the Wifi WPA key and it was part of the network. A bit of configuration in the Wifi access point to ensure it always gets the same IP address and the network was ready, too. The PictBridge USB port also supports USB sticks for direct printing and Bluetooth dongles to print directly from a mobile phone. I tried it with the Bluetooth dongle I usually use with my PC and the printer detected and used the Bluetooth stick without any manual configuration. Once the phone has sent the picture via Bluetooth the print starts automatically. Very nice. Printing from a PC via the Wifi network works just as quickly as over Ethernet or USB cable except for a somewhat long startup time of 20 seconds or so before the first page is printed. Subsequent pages, however, are printed without delay.

While I am very impressed with the printer I am VERY disappointed with the PC software of HP. I installed it on two computers and both, after rebooting, had a nasty task running in the background which consumed 100% of the processing power. Looks like I am not the only person with that problem so fortunately the Internet provided quick help. HP, how can such a glitch happen? Also, the software is not really light on CPU resources. While the printer is online some tasks in the background keep loading my CPU. Not that I would bother too much but the fan on my notebook runs almost permanently. Again, HP, what were you thinking? I’ve fixed the problem with a little hack, i.e. by killing the tasks running in the background and only activating them when I want to print something.

Despite the flaky HP software the printer integrates nicely in my home network due to the built in Wifi chip. No longer do I have to use memory sticks or to carry a notebook around when I want to print out something from a computer which is not close to the printer.

Velib’s Mobile Site

For a couple of months now, the city of Paris has an extensive network of automated bike rental stations throughout the city. The service is called "Velib" and is very well accepted. Velib’s are everywhere these days when you are out and about.

Screenshot0014_2
Velib also has a mobile site where people can search for the nearest Velib station and can see how many bikes are available there. The picture on the left shows how this looks like in the browser. It’s a bit pathetic that in this day and age, the service is still based on WAP 1.0, but o.k., it’s better than nothing. The service in it’s current state is a bit difficult to use but it shows the potential for tomorrow: With mobile phones with built in GPS receivers becoming more common and powerful mobile web browsers with AJAX support can be easily enhanced in the future to locate the user, center the map around his position and show him the next bike rental station with the information he needs.

Velib should publish a JavaScript API to retrieve bike rental station positions and availability information. I am sure somebody in Paris will quickly come up with a mobile mashup that combines Velib and Google Maps.

Offline Web Applications on Mobile Devices – Part 2

This blog enty is part 2 of my thoughts on offline web applications on mobile devices. In case you haven’t seen part 1 and are interested in this topic, you might want to read part 1 first before continuing here.

When allowing web applications to store data offline and to access locally available information a number of issues arise that require special attention:

Data Synchronization

When storing data both in a local database in the network, the databases have to be synchronized once the mobile device regains network connection. Even for single user applications local and remote database synchronization is not straight forward since the user could have first used the application on the mobile device while it was offline to change some data and later on via the desktop that modified that data in the network. This means that when the mobile devices goes online it can not assume the data base in the network was not modified. Thus, the application needs an algorithm to compare the changes made in the database on the mobile device with the changes made in the database on the network and then modify the local and the network database accordingly. The same applies to multi user applications such as shared calendars.

Access to Local Information Outside the Browser Cache

A big advantage of mobile devices is the ability to support the user’s creativity at the point of inspiration. When pictures, videos, podcasts, blog entries etc. are created on the mobile device they can automatically be enriched with other information such as GPS location before being instantly sent to a picture and video sharing site, blogs, etc. Current web applications, however, do not have access to files and other local data beyond what they can write into the local web database themselves while the device is not connected to the web. In the future it is thus necessary to create an interface for web applications to enable them to access user created content and additional information such as location information. Access to local information needs to be dealt with carefully as it presents a security and privacy issue as will be further discussed below. From the technical point of view the big question is how web applications could gain local access in a generic way to make them interoperable over a wide variety of devices. Some devices might have more sources of information than others. As using proprietary APIs to access such information would make web applications device specific, a standard set of functions must be designed which are then translated on each device into proprietary operating system commands.

Security and Privacy Considerations

Allowing a web application to store data locally or to even access local information beyond the browser cache has a number of security and privacy implications which have to be considered when implementing such functionality.

The main issue with having a local application and data cache in the web browser is that JavaScript applications can use the local cache for user tracking. Advertisement platforms could use the local interface to write a JavaScript program that is included in all web pages of their advertising partners and that records from which page it has been invoked in the local cache. When the same JavaScript application is executed again from a different page it reports the last page back to the advertisement server which can then generate a user profile. As most users are unlikely to agree with such methods the user has to be informed that an application wants to store information locally and what kind of privacy issues this could bring with it. The user should then have the choice to allow or deny the use of local storage either temporarily or, in case the JavaScript application is trusted, permanently.
Access to local device information outside the browser cache is even more sensitive as malicious JavaScript applications could read private data of the user and send it to a server in the network. Therefore, the user has to be informed about the JavaScript application trying to access local data and give the user the possibility to allow or deny the request. It is then for the user to decide whether he trusts the application and thus allows access to local resources. Again, the user should have the choice to allow access temporarily or permanently as trusted applications should be able to access local data without further queries to the user once agreement has been given. Otherwise, usability of the application would suffer.

As always, comments are welcome!