Mobitrends

No, Cisco won’t be making mobile phones (or at least as long as they are not all-IP, I guess), but they acquired last week Orative a San Jose company editing a mobile software to boost multi-user interaction by linking mobile phones to enterprise IM: you can know if someone is available *before* phoning him, or request a call if it’s urgent…

Technorati Tags: cisco, mobile, orative, message

Finally, after 5 months as a pedestrian I got myself a new car ;). The last one went down after an electronic failure after 7 years. Anyway, I’m happy to be able to go far beyond Paris without a trip in the outer suburbs to become a nightmare!

Technorati Tags: bmw, car, paris

Adobe sent out a press release last week regarding the support from Verizon of Flash Lite for Brew:

Flash Lite for BREW is currently available on four Get It Now-enabled Verizon Wireless handsets, including The V (LG VX9800), Motorola Razr V3c and Motorola V3m and Samsung SCH-a950. The companies expect Flash Lite to be available on additional handsets in the coming weeks. Verizon Wireless customers can purchase engaging Flash Lite for BREW content and applications directly on their phones in Verizon Wireless’ Get It Now virtual store.

Flashdevices has a demo video of how it’s working from an end user prospective:

Technorati Tags: flash+lite, verizon

I just read on Engadget that AT&T just launched a home monitoring service. Priced one-shot at 200$ and then 10$/month, you get a dedicated equipment connected to Internet and sending videos at … 3-7fps… So when you will watch that on your handset don’t expect more than 1-2 fps! You can of course schedule alerts based on motion detection. Basically I think it’s a good idea… but the set-up fee is way too expensive for such a low-quality service.
Anyway it’s a first step towards connected home !

Technorati Tags: home, camera, spy

Some news with hacking WiFi on the PSP on aibohack which provides a new version of its multi-test homebrew app for Sony PSP. Basically it demonstrates a set of I/Os such as :

• Picker for net conguration (DHCP now supported !)
• Picker for one of four tests
• Connect timeout logic and other improvements
• More fleshed out “sockets.h”-like header (getting better, not complete)
• Sample build with the PSPSDK (get latest)
• Test#1: mini-telnetd like app. Telnet to your PSP and it will display on the screen. Similar to the original version but now allows larger display. [TCP/IP with the PSP as the server]
• Test#2: wireless photo frame. UDP send a JPG to your PSP and it will display on the screen. [UDP/IP with the PSP as the server]
• Test#3: AiboCam/Scope viewer. Run RCodePlus or AiboLifePlus on your ERS-2×0 Sony AIBO robot dog. Shows AIBO camera image and color detection grids on the PSP. [polled TCP/IP protocol with the PSP as the client, custom video codec]
• Test#4: CLIE SpyCam Watcher. Run ClieSpyCam (URL) on your Sony CLIE PDA. Shows the camera image on the PSP. [polled TCP/IP protocol with the PSP as the client, JPG image data]

The app is available for download along with source code for psp toolchain.

Technorati Tags: hack, psp, wifi

ABI Research reports that Cisco decided to distribute the Cognio’s RF Spectrum analyzer suite. Indeed Cisco has calculated that over 50% of the WiFi problems encountered are coming from third party devices causing inferences on the WiFi spectrum. And indeed the spectrum is getting crowded, tons of access points plus hundreds of specific devices on this frequencies are making it harder and harder to guarantee the proper operations of a WiFi network, and Cognio’s solution is a first step in explaining and diagnosing a network malfunction… but still it cannot avoid your neighbors’ baby-surveillance system to interfere with your company’s WiFi…

Technorati Tags: interference, spectrum, wifi

The editor of Dragon Dictate (one of the top voice recognition systems) released a mobile version of its software, here is an excerpt of the press release :

With applications designed on the Nuance Mobile Speech Platform, users can speak natural queries to find ringtones, locate the nearest Starbucks, search the Web, or dictate a complete SMS or email. Users can even instruct their devices by voice to read back incoming messages, such as an SMS, or content, such as on-screen directions, using Nuance’s latest text-to-speech technology. The Nuance Mobile Speech Platform largely eliminates the need to use structured phrasing when speaking queries, and even filters “um” and “ah” type utterances, for fast, highly accurate recognition and response.

The Nuance Mobile Speech Platform allows users to speak SMS or e-mail messages using highly accurate, large vocabulary speech recognition, the same technology that powers Nuance’s award winning Dragon™ NaturallySpeaking® desktop dictation products, thereby eliminating the need to “thumb” in text using predictive technology or mini QWERTY keyboards.

Dailywireless reports that it even broke an input speed record previously held by a teen who was typing 44 signs a minute, so it sounds like the software is really doing it I didn’t found any information about a release of a demo version though … looking forward to tying it !

Technorati Tags: speech, recognition, mobile

Can we really trust RFID-based ID cards or cash cards ? Obviously not ! Engadget reports that those have already been cracked… In this is just so simple! Indeed, the reading range of a RFID-reader is just directly proportional to the power injected in the reader’s antenna (the unit to measure that is the Tesla, check your physics lessons). So some smart guys designed RF shielding wallets… so if you get one of those RF cards, don’t forget that the contactless world remains tricky and that now your Visa might be stolen from over a mile distance!
Note that if you know me and if we have been talking about RFID any time for the past 3 years, you must have heard this from me already… but well as usual until some hacking really occurs nobody ever takes this kind of warnings into consideration…

Technorati Tags: hack, rfid, reader

JDN (Journal Du Net) is one of the major French internet news source part of the Benchmark Group which holds many paper and digital newspapepers. They ran a nice review of the state of the M2M business last week in this article. WaveStorm and I were cited thoroughly within this article. I think the conclusions drawn by Yves might be a bit severe, we are really seeing an explosion in the market since a few months, and as he reports, the market potentialities are really awesome. Anyway this review is a must read for those who still wonder what this M2M business is!

Technorati Tags: m2m, jdn, wavestorm