Archive for August, 2007
Home networking is starting for the masses
It’s the second product of this kind that I see in a couple of days, so I guess it’s time to declare that home hetworkign is really starting to happen. Up to now home networking was basically limited to a laptop connected through WiFi to a broadband router… not such a big deal and a word “network” a bit exagerated.
Casual mass-market devices such as this sound-system by Philips are finally getting that wireless feature built-in and open the way to a real device network in the home.
I’m pretty excited because this is something I’ve been envisioning for a couple of years and seeing the first mass market devices reach the market is really cool. Knowing that non g33ks might have that kind of stuff in their house very soon now really opens up a lot a oportunities !
Technorati Tags: philips, sound+system
Nokia live webcast, tomorrow
Tomorrow there’s a live webcast at 11pm GMT where Nokia should re-launch (for the third time) his N-Gage platform initiative. Check it out at http://www.nokia.com/press/goplay. The New York Times has a sneak peek of the event :
In the new N-Gage service, customers will be able to sample games free before buying them. The selection will lean toward the casual side of gaming, with soccer and fishing titles and the popular puzzle game Bejeweled, among others.
Nokia will formally reintroduce N-Gage this week with new game developers and new phones for mobile gaming. The company says it has sold more than 125 million of its Series 60 smartphones worldwide. The N-Gage games will make their debut this fall on only a few of those models, but the company will extend the service to the rest of the Series 60 line over the next year.
Nao replaces Aibo
Congratulations to Nao and his dad Bruno Maisonnier for this huge success, can’t wait to see it in action !
NAO humanoid robot, developed by Aldebaran Robotics,
has been officially selected to replace AIBO in RoboCup competitions. According
to the RoboCup Standard Platform League website, the league,
which was previously known as the “Four-Legged League” has been
renamed to the “Standard Platform League”, and NAO has been selected as the new
standard platform for competitions.“Currently, there exist a number of
different RoboCup soccer leagues that focus on different aspects of this
challenge. The Standard Platform League is one of them. In the league all
teams use identical robots. Therefore the teams concentrate on software
development only, while still using state-of-the-art robots. The robots
operate fully autonomously, i.e. there is no external control, neither by
humans nor by computers. This year, the league goes through a transition from
the four-legged Sony AIBO to the humanoid Aldebaran Nao.”This is a tremendous vote of confidence for the NAO robot design, and for
Aldebaran itself. The company, which is still very much in start-up mode, has
yet to ship its first robot. Supporting the needs, and demands, of the RoboCup
teams participating in this league worldwide will be a significant
challenge, but should also provide significant benefits. The feedback, and
field use information that will pour into Aldebaran as the RoboCup teams
gear up, will prove to be invaluable and should give them a strong leg up over
the competition in this class of humanoid robots.
The world is Open
I’ve been having that discussion at least 3 times this week… so I guess it is worth writing down !
Guys, the world is open ! Success of newest ventures such as Facebook are based only in one fact : they provide an open framework where geeks can create value and leverage on the user base at incredible speed. Today, someone willing to create a closed service would be seen probably as insane, as the end users wants to enjoy new tools his own way ! He want them on igoogle, on netvibes, on facebook, on his mobile, he wants to share it, to mash it up with other services, to show it on his blog and only that way will the end user become loyal to the service provider and will spend time putting his own personal data within the service provider’s database !
The world is open remember that 
iPhone unlocking
Took me a couple of hours to try the various unlocking methods… and finally TurboSIM worked for me ! So I’m now a happy iPhone lover/user that can do more that WiFi browsing
I wrote a few guidelines here for those interested.
Windows Live @ Nokia
Nokia has announced today a partnership with Microsoft Live Services (MSN Messenger, Hotmail…):
“The availability of Windows Live services for Nokia’s devices demonstrates our commitment to delivering great mobile experiences and extending people’s online lives — taking them from the PC to the device,” said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Business at Microsoft. “The alliance will enable a much broader group of consumers to experience the benefits Windows Live has to offer, easily connecting them to the information and people that matter most from virtually anywhere.”
Service will be lauched initially in 11 countries including; Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, U.K., Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Next possible step : abandon Symbian and switch to Windows mobile ? Nah… they still have shares in Symbian
Technorati Tags: nokia
Orange, T-Mobile and Voda splitting revenue with Apple
There have been tough negociations to decide who will be allowed to sell the iPhone in France, Germany and UK. Happy winners are Voda, T-Mobile and Orange. What is pretty awesome is that it’s rumored that operators wil share with apple 10% of the revenue coming from voice and text-messages ! This is a first and I’m not sure how operators can adjust their business model to that. Although sharing data revenue is something they’ve been doing before, sharing core voice revenue with a terminal manufacturer opens up a pretty nice breach.
FCC Auctions for 700MHz are getting ready
You might have read a lot about this 700MHz auction thing… let’s try and understand it. First thing first: what’s that spectrum:
The FCC has produced a helfpul map of the available spectrum, which runs from 698-806MHz. In the image above, the yellow sections have already been auctioned off, and the gray sections are reserved for the nationwide public safety broadband network that will be constructed over the next few years. The remaining (white) A,B,C,D, and E blocks are what will be offered at auction later this year.
Big blocks are C (22MHz) and D (10MHz) available nationwide, A, B and E are only available on some areas. The 22MHz C block also comes with requirements: 40 percent coverage within four years, 75 percent coverage within 10. C and D blocks come with special regulations : According to USA Today, Kevin Martin, chairman of FCC, says that the only exceptions would be for “software that is illegal or could harm a network,” leaving the network otherwise open for anyone to “use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions.”
We know that google is interested in that spectrum, as Verizon who see in it opportunities for expanding his network. It sounds like this spectrum is bound to be used for mobile applications, but it seems unclear yet what this truly means… and although the spectrum is pretty powerful, it will require a pretty dense local cell infrastructure to work efficiently.
Technorati Tags: FCC+700MHz
Google is recruiting very young entrepreneurs
Thanks Alexis for the gift Georges already loves it (although he might want to take another few cm before wearing it :p )
