Wireless

While I've been writing other things, I've not stopped contemplating the concept of the global metaverse. My reading and writing are somewhat connected to these things, and while I think we can all agree that connecting everyone and anyone is somewhat utopian - it is still a worthwhile goal. In places where the majority of people are connected to the internet, as an example, the goal is about giving better connections to the internet. The disparity between a dial-up connection and a broadband connection is often considered a digital divide - but that is lost in the context of how few people are actually connected to the internet. While it is important to connect the young man on the right to the rest of the world so that his contributions can be made and that he may also benefit from the communication... there has to be a balance.

And then there is the question of the value of the internet itself. Newton's Third Law states that every action force has an equal and opposite reaction force. Within a context of technology, this is something which Steve Talbott wrote around within the pages of Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines. Every advance in technology changes things - we typically see the good and discount the bad. The telephone, as wonderful as it seems in all of its reinventions, does allow people to communicate over great distances. But mobile technology has also made it questionable as to whether the connection with someone at a distance is more important than the person right in front of you. { Read more }

Through Sharon B's Mindtracks I found the 3 megabyte PDF, Metaverse Roadmap Overview.

I opened it up, and a few names popped out. Sure, the Second Life denizens were easy to spot (though many seem to be laying low after creating high priced virtual paperweights). But I know Jamais Cascio and Ethan Zuckerman through WorldChanging.com. Granted, it has been a while, but I have had more communication with them than most on things. We don't always agree, but we don't have to. They even had Baba Yamamoto as a reviewer, he who was banned from Second Life¹.

So I read through what all these 'industry leaders' had to say. When I read it, though, it seemed half prospectus and half advertorial. There is a lot of technology that can be merged, or as people in the US like to say, 'mashed up'². And generally speaking, there might be some value to some of it - though that value is ill defined and very subjective. Swimming in information is all well and good, but there is a reason that there is the phrase, "Too much information". While having the world at my fingertips is tempting, I really don't see how my life could be improved by many of these things - and I'm no Luddite by any stretch. This leads to whether we look at things as long term success or short term success. { Read more }

Cisco Systems, was featured at a press conference today within SecondLife. This was the last part of the Cisco Systems event, as listed here¹:

9:00 a.m. SLT, Bandwidth Stage.; Live stream of CEO John Chambers' keynote at Interop, Las Vegas.
10:30 a.m. SLT, Live stream from Interop Mobility Booth in Las Vegas
12:00 noon, SLT, Virtual Press Conference with Cisco executives - SL Only Event. Mobility Pavilion on Cisco Systems Sim 1. { Read more }

The W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries findings have been published in a report which, when I read it, seemed pretty familiar to things myself and others had been speaking of for quite some time. Perhaps some of that was the influence of Justin Oberman who, like me, was at the MobileActive convergence where a few of us from developing nations seemed to fail to press the point that not all technology access is equal around the world. For example, Bukeni Waruzi said that an SMS message in his part of the world costs about $1 US to send - and that only one SMS message per mobile phone per day is/was allowed.

The report s available, and while it doesn't say too much that myself and others haven't mentioned before - I guess it is in report form now so the academics can reference it - people dealing with technology in the developing world on a day to day basis know most of the stuff - it seems mainly to be for educating people in developed nations. The next steps, per the report:

* First of all, this event demonstrated the need for a public forum to share and capitalize experiences in running ICT projects in developing countries. This may lead to the creation of best practices and guidelines for providing mobile e-services in the developing world. This forum would be a place where experts in the mobile technologies and experts in ICT in developing countries could share expertise.
* Given that SMS applications are successful, it is very important to analyze what are the key points of success in order to understand how to ease the transition to the mobile Web as the platform for applications
* It will be essential to lobby at handset manufacturers and international organizations defining the basic specifications of handsets for developing countries for them to integrate the minimum browsing capabilities. These minimal capabilities may be coming from the above-mentioned analysis of the success of SMS applications. It will also be very important to understand the nature of the low-end devices: what are current minimal characteristics of devices we could rely on in terms of memory, sim card, java availabilities, ... in order to recommend an appropriate way to provide web capabilities on these devices. { Read more }

Skype says time is not ripe for cellphone version:

... But Eric Lagier, in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show here, said that while development work is being carried out, most of the other telecoms network operators had not yet created attractive flat-fee wireless broadband packages that are needed to take full advantage of Internet calls.

In fact, most carriers charge significant amounts of money per megabyte downloaded and sent to a mobile phone.

"We don't want to be in a situation where we say: 'Skype is free' and then at the end of the month the user gets this huge broadband bill," Lagier said...

When will the cost per megabyte come down? No one knows.

Meanwhile, unbeknowest to the rest of the world, Cisco has a trademark that Apple is allegedly infringing - iPhone. Oops:

...CISCO has sued Apple for infringing on its "iPhone" trademark, a day after Apple unveiled a multimedia phone of the same name.

Cisco said it was seeking an injunctive relief to prevent Apple from "infringing upon and deliberately copying and using" the trademark, which Cisco obtained in 2000 after acquiring Infogear. Infogear had previously owned the trademark and had sold iPhones for several years, it said.

Linksys, a division of Cisco, has been selling wireless products with the iPhone name since early last year, with new products added to the line in December.

On Tuesday, a Cisco spokeswoman said the company had been in discussions with Apple, and it believed Apple would agree to a final document and public statement concerning the trademark.

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel of Cisco, said in a statement. { Read more }

In between the open source party and technical town hall meeting, I managed to hop over to the Cisco simulator to catch their Connected Home event. That sort of stuff is always interesting (at least for me), especially when it is about connecting devices. What the Cisco folks were talking about was just that - with one caveat that always catches my ear: open standards.

I was a little late (ok, 17 minutes) so I missed some of the talk - but I don't think I missed too much. I tossed out a question as to whether the connected home concept was also related to [t:home automation], and I was happy to hear that this is a long term plan. First, of course, you need to get things communicating. Funny how that works.

Conversation switched to the news of the open sourcing of the SecondLife client - and Cisco folks hinted at something that they are doing related to that. No details yet - they said they want to have it done first. Another thing which was discussed - possibly related - was VoIP embedded in the SecondLife client, something quite a few people have mentioned here and there.

I expect that there will be a transcript up from the event; if and when it is I'll post the URL here.

As it is, it seems like Cisco is using SecondLife in a pretty immersive way. The Connected Home event had a walkthrough home as an example. They are also doing training on their second simulator - a certified course (forgot the name), and plenty of information around. Perhaps Cisco, more than other companies in SL, 'gets it'. SecondLife appears to be an integrated part of what they are doing instead of a cancerous virtual outgrowth into another dimension. { Read more }

Making a cup of coffee in the kitchen, my thoughts drifted to SMS - a method by which one cousin and I keep in contact regularly since it tends to get through even when the infrastructure in Trinidad and Tobago doesn't quite come up to par.

Then I thought about the people I work with, and how we all stay in touch on IRC.

So then I thought - well, wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to use IRC on a mobile phone?

A search, and a find - jmIrc. Instead of just texting and waiting, texting and waiting - and even texting one person and relaying what someone else texted you... an IRC ability might be pretty handy for quick meetings between more than one person.

I'll have to play with this sometime this week. Of course, I probably should pay my phone bill before they cut off my service. :-)

This is definitely MobileActive fodder - and may even have implications when considering something like SecondLife. Sure, the full graphics interface might suck - but meetings in SL might be attended in an IRC fashion on a mobile phone... and that could be a step toward other things...

Definitely something worth discussing.

2007. What will happen in 2007? It seems a lot like 2006, almost as if it were a continuance. While Romanians and Bulgarians woke up and felt more EUish (what effect on sex slavery in these countries?), I don't know that many people will see much of a difference other than a hangover.

What will happen during 2007? A few things are almost certain. Since I deal mainly with technology, I'll use that as the focus:

Technology { Read more }

• Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will get released.
• Windows Vista will suffer security issues.
• Linux will continue to dominate mobile devices, and the user desktop may be taken seriously by gaming companies as a worthwhile platform for gaming.
• The OLPC will continue to fail to meet the lofty goals set for it, and may rob some countries of money which could have been used to build infrastructure. The technologies used on the OLPC, if truly open, will be beneficial for adaptation around the world.
• Virtual Worlds, such as SecondLife, will fall out of their own virtual reality but will continue to be used as marketing platforms and in 2007 - political platforms. Like the internet, some opportunists will charge exorbitant fees to make presences for corporations in virtual worlds - but this will not last as long as the Dot-com bubble.
• SecondLife will begin a visible process toward open source, and issues of virtual economy, security and international law will become more visible to the average netizen through this.
• Global internet penetration will pass 30%.