Archive for May, 2006
Windows Rally
I had to talk about Windows Rally, really ;). I don’t have any clear opinion on this technology but I’ll try to give the main ideas around it.
Here is some Microsoft propaganda about it :
The Microsoft® Windows® Rally™ technologies provide device manufacturers with the best platform for creating effortless, secure and reliable connectivity between their devices and PCs, support for new connectivity scenarios, and richer experiences for their customers while reducing the cost and time of development.
Device manufacturers who take advantage of the Windows Rally technologies can reduce their development and support costs, while increasing their ability to innovate with devices that offer new user experiences in media networking, Internet communications, and device-to-PC and device-to-device data exchange.
Microsoft® Windows® Rally™ technologies provide device manufacturers with an architecture and toolset for improving the security, reliability, and usability of network-connected devices. Windows Rally technologies enable effortless setup and more secure and manageable connectivity to other devices and PCs.
Devices that incorporate Windows Rally technologies give users access to richer, more secure experiences. Windows Rally technologies enable easier integration of devices with the end user’s digital environment, while advancing control of network Quality of Service (QoS) and diagnostics.
Basically, Microsoft Rally is based on 4 protocols:
- LLTD : Link Layer Topology Discovery protocol : enables to quickly discover devices at the data-link layer
- Windows Connect Now : enables simple and secure configuration of wireless networks and provisioning of wireless hardware
- Devices Profile for Web Services : a set of Web Service specifications and constraints that define a core set of Web Services functionality
- Plug And Play Extensions (PnP-X): network-connected devices as discoverable as those that are connected directly to a computer over a bus such as Universal Serial Bus
This protocol stack is royalty-free… so I guess I’ll have a look at those as at least the LLTD looks interesting !
Why M2M is so great?
When people talk about M2M they often think about those wnderful communication modules, which are an anthem to state-of-the-art embedded technology bringing together radiofrequence know-how, micro-computing, system design …
But what can be imagined thanks to those modules is the real stuff ! Here are three examples to highlight how M2M is changing our everyday life :
Violet’s Nabaztag is a little white rabbit that can talk, move its ears and light up its cheeks. It connects to the world using WiFi and can talk with your friend’s Nabaztags by moving its ears and can receive & play your friend’s messages. This rabbit has been an utter success in France where it was launched before Christmas and wen out-of-stock in a few weeks time.-
The eStarling frame is just another success story. This LCD frame can connect tou Gmail & Flickr using WiFi and can show your latest uploaded photos or any of your favorite’s easily. If you are familiar with Flickr’s social aspects you can only gaze at how great this can be ! This frame, just like the rabbit, has sold out in a few days ! Thinkgeek is waiting desperatly for a new stock. 
The Kodak EasyShare Camera is just the counter-side of the estarling frame. It was the first digital camera that could directly send the photo it takes to an online picture gallery using any open WiFi HotSpot.
Those examples show that connected devices in our everyday life aren’t just phantasmatic, it’s getting real, and this is just the start ! I’m sure this blog will witness many more in the next few years !
Why M2M is so great?
When people talk about M2M they often think about those wnderful communication modules, which are an anthem to state-of-the-art embedded technology bringing together radiofrequence know-how, micro-computing, system design …
But what can be imagined thanks to those modules is the real stuff ! Here are three examples to highlight how M2M is changing our everyday life :
- Violet’s Nabaztag is a little white rabbit that can talk, move its ears and light up its cheeks. It connects to the world using WiFi and can talk with your friend’s Nabaztags by moving its ears and can receive & play your friend’s messages. This rabbit has been an utter success in France where it was launched before Christmas and wen out-of-stock in a few weeks time.
-
The eStarling frame is just another success story. This LCD frame can connect tou Gmail & Flickr using WiFi and can show your latest uploaded photos or any of your favorite’s easily. If you are familiar with Flickr’s social aspects you can only gaze at how great this can be ! This frame, just like the rabbit, has sold out in a few days ! Thinkgeek is waiting desperatly for a new stock.
- The Kodak EasyShare Camera is just the counter-side of the estarling frame. It was the first digital camera that could directly send the photo it takes to an online picture gallery using any open WiFi HotSpot.
Those examples show that connected devices in our everyday life aren’t just phantasmatic, it’s getting real, and this is just the start ! I’m sure this blog will witness many more in the next few years !
What is M2M ?
M2M stands for “Machine to Machine”. This refers to machines communicating with other machines to exchange information.
Why would machines communicate together ?
Firstly, because machines are now everywhere, the simplest circuit switch could now be a miniaturized computer automating the house and optimising its power consumption, Cola can delivery machines have a live vision of their stock and are able to alert the maintenance guys to proceed to a refill.
Secondly because there are more and more information to process fastly. In order to keep the pace with the machine’s speed, we need to have them be autonomous, at least for the basic and usual stuff.
Finally because we love seeing our stuff around us adapting and “understanding” us. Everyone is unique and those machines are all the same… except if they start adapting to our very personal characteristics (tastes, habits…)
Machine to Machine is just the starting point of a new revolution where, with the human at the center, the machines start working together hand in hand to ease our everyday’s life.
How can machine communicate together?
Nowadays we can see one main M2M thechnologye using GSM-Cellular modules. Companies such as Motorola, Siemens, Wavecom, provide modules enabling long-range machine to machine communication by sending SMS or using data-link. Above is a screenshot of Motorola’s G20 Module which is an example of what an M2M module looks like.
New technologies such as ZigBee, UWB, WiFi, WiMax, bluetooth are starting to be used for M2M applications. This will be the starting point to a real revolution as everything inhouse starts communicating.
Technorati Tags: GSM, m2m, WiFi, ZigBee, UWB, Motorola, WaveCom, Siemens
Scanbuy in Wall Street Journal
I’ve been thoroughly talking about those Qr-Codes & Datamatrix 2D-barcodes that can be read by your cellphone’s camera. Congratulations to Scanbuy, one of the main international technology provider of 2D barcode decoding software for mobile phones that got an article in front page of the Personal section of the Wall Street Journal ! Here is an excerpt :
A rising number of people are using new free services to connect to the mobile Internet by photographing bar codes. The codes — either conventional bar codes or digital ones — are showing up on more products, advertisements, books and even buildings. The technology is popular in Asia but previously failed to catch on in the U.S. after several attempts. Now, improving technologies and the ubiquity of camera phones are triggering a host of new bar-code services.
The codes are appearing gradually in grocery stores, embedded in business cards, on promotional posters and T-shirts and even near landmarks like the Chrysler Building, around where people placed a code linking to the building’s Wikipedia entry. They are piquing the interest of advertisers who see the potential to serve up more relevant ads — a trailer downloaded off a movie billboard, for instance — and consumer-product companies trying to make products more interactive.
Those codes have been highly successful in Japan, thanks to NTT power to impose a technology and new usages, it’s now finally arriving in the rest of the world !
But there are many players providing this technology, Scanbuy, of course, but also Abaxia, Shotcode … One of the key factor of success & mass adoption will be the emergence of one standard and one technology that will allow the end user to simply read any code’s embedded information without the headache of understanding which kind of code it is and what is the right reader to read that.
Technorati Tags: mobile, m-commerce, barcode
Back from Asia
It’s been a wonderful journey ! Bali, Lombok, Hong Kong… We enjoyed some diving, sun bathing, shopping, readig and video games on the beach & pool side with my girlfriend !
We’re now ready for the new challenges that awaits us 
full of energy !
Got two weeks of news to catch up with, many things have happened while we were out there unreacheable from usual GSM & WiFi !
congratulations to Rodrigo’s Vpod.TV who closed its first round deal with Innovacom .
By the way, I decided to move this blog to english, as my statistics show that many of my readers are based in the US & UK and are bearing with babelfish’s translation to read this blog …. this must be a hard time for you !
Check some nice dive pictures on my flickr (and especially check out the vampire fish) !
Blog en vacances !
Apres plus de 9 mois sans la moindre vacance, je pars dimanche pour deux semaines de farniente et de plongée à Bali & Lombok et un passage par Hong Kong avec ma douce et tendre !
Le blog aussi a droit à ses vacances 
on a trouvé des super hôtels sans Internet donc je ne pourrai pas bloguer, et je ne serai même pas tenté de le faire ! On se revoit le 23 !
Alex
PS: Petit clin d’oeil à tous ceux qui avaient parié que je partirai jamais en vacances !
Technorati Tags: indonesia
Opera Mini 2.0
Il vient juste de sortir aujourd’hui annonce le blog d’Opéra mobile ! Pour le récupérer pointez votre browser WAP sur http://mini.opera.com/. Au menu:
- Téléchargement de contenus directement sur le téléphone
- Nouvelles Skins
- Accès rapide aux moteurs de recherche
- Accès rapide aux favoris (comme mon blog sur mobitype)
- Navigation 2D
Opéra Mini a déjà 2 millions d’utlisateurs… et moi depuis cette nouvelle version ! Essayez là c’est pas mal du tout ! N’oubliez pas que chez T-Mobile, Opéra Mini est préinstallé dans les téléphones de leur offre “Web’n'talk” suivi peu après par Débitel.
Le téléphone pour accéder au web et plus juste au portail opérateur, c’est vraiment une tendance lourde !
Services sur carte SIM ?
Ca faisait longtemps que je cherchais une bonne excuse pour en parler, et cet article sur textually paraissait suffisant pour que je réagisse. Voilà ce que Nokia prépare :
We (Nokia) believe that being able to run a globally accessible personal website on your mobile phone has the potential of changing the Internet landscape. If every mobile phone or even every smartphone initially, is equipped with a webserver then very quickly most websites will reside on mobile phones. That is bound to have some impact not only on how mobile phones are perceived but also on how the web evolves.
Sans aller jusque de telles extrémités et en sortant de l’intérêt de Nokia qui se limite uniquement au téléphone et qui ne serait pas contre voire disparaître la carte SIM, je pense que cette dernière est encore loin d’avoir endossé toutes les fonctions qui lui incombent. En effet je sais que de nombreux programmes de recherches ont pour objet d’utiliser la carte SIM comme tiers de confiance, l’utilisant comme proxy pour l’intégralité des services accessibles. Cette dernière serait donc une espèce de firewall cryptographique permettant d’isoler le terminal du réseau, et en charge de tout ce qui concerne la sécurité des informations passant par elle, et ce grâce à ses capacités cryptographiques.
Sinon pour le serveur WEB, je crois que Axalto en avait parlé aux derniers mobile mondays
Update : j’ai creusé un peu l’approche de Nokia : ils ont porté le serveur Apache … je suis un peu mort de rire … y’a des serveurs plus légers et plus optimisé pour l’embarqué sur le marché quand même ..
Technorati Tags: SIM
