The Wi-Fi World is Flat Category Archives

September 03, 2007

"Too Long A Sacrifice": Thoughts on Muni Wi-Fi

Readers Note: this is second blog relating to thoughts on my dual-mode device.

"Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream."
- W.B. Yeats, "Easter 1916"

I am in a literary mood this labor day and I was thinking about the seminal poem on the Irish revolution, whereby W.B. Yeats noted that “too long a sacrifice/can make a stone of the heart.” To this, the Muni Wi-Fi cottage industry, of which we at Cisco are, to be fair, members, has wrestled with business models and performance claims. With the delay of the much heralded San Francisco network, and its attendant issues all around to service providers, digital inclusion partners, and, yes, equipment vendors, it is clear we have now ended Muni Wi-Fi’s “summer of discontent.”

Yet I do not think we are at the unremarkable end of city-wide Wi-Fi networks. Indeed, now that we have burned off the ephemeral and seemingly endless dialogues about “advertising-led” networks (can you imagine, we spend our lives DVRing all of television so we can be assaulted by more ads when we are out and about???), we can get back to the real goals and financial models of these networks.

Yes, they are networks. They have network economics. Lots of people have to use them for real reasons for them to make sense. Increasingly, in the Web 2.0/collaborative world, the reason might have less to do with web-surfing then with being able to create mobile social networks. My top use of my dual-mode include new messaging apps that are rapidly replacing email in my communications pantheon.

Thus the avalanche of dual-mode devices, including my trusty Nokia e61i, starts to kick in. These are exactly the kinds of devices, including the lovely Apple iPhone that can take advantage of these networks. Connecting ME/YOU to specific kinds of information, adding a real-time nature to social/business collaboration might be a (cough) killer app. Increasingly I use my dual mode for downloading forms of video (training, entertainment, etc.) It is an ideal medium for 2-3 minute clips.

So speed does count. I am now just starting to get reports of people using the iPhone on our WLAN mesh networks across the country. The superior download speeds of these networks compared to the Edge cellular networks make for a more compelling surfing/ downloading experience. And as HPDSA/3G becomes more pervasive, the bar becomes notched up just another level. Guess what? 802.11n comes into Muni networks, next. What a great thing for users!

To paraphrase Twain: rumors on demise of Muni Wi-Fi networks are much exaggerated.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 09:39 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 24, 2007

6 Months on A Dual Mode. Not Quite Walt Mossberg, but Here I Go....

Good Morning Blogosphere,

I have just completed my first 6 months using a dual-mode smartphone and wanted to share some early observations on the experience. My model was Nokia’s excellent e61i, which went from a stealth device on our corporate IT plan to a full-fledged choice for all Cisco Mobility users.

With a tip of the hat to Walt Mossberg, I wanted to offer a quick review of my dual-mode corporate mobility experience for the first six months, including the service and the device.

Truth in packaging opening:
For someone in my position, carrying one of these devices is an absolute must. It like being part of a political party or a club: it says, I belong to the dual mode, seamless collaboration generation. Nonetheless, the explosion of these devices in the Cisco environment suggest to me, in the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Let’s start with the things I like. While the features provided by the secure environment do not vary dramatically from my prior smart phone, there are a range of new things and improvements that blow away the first mobile platform I carried for the past two years:

- Web access through this device is a huge gain. I have the opportunity to pre-configure an “access point” in the installation of the device. Thanks to our trusty friends in the 3GPP world, access point can be a choice of cellular data networks or it can be a Wi-Fi access point. Or I can actually let the network ask me which is the best air interface approach when I device to click on a web link

- In the words of WNBU CTO Pat Calhoun, you can travel the world with this device and never need a guide book. The Google website and a dual mode phone is a virtual Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. What I have found is I have replaced directory assistance on the phone with Google searches wherever I am. So if I am in Las Vegas looking for Sushi, the e61i is in gear. If about to hop in the car for the drudge home, I check the California traffic site and check on the best roads to take home

-Cisco Unified Mobile Communicator (CUM) is a huge part of my productivity environment. My entire UC environment is in the palm of my hand, including one click to my conference environment, presence-enabled buddy lists, vm, etc.

- A plug for the device! There is much to like about the e61i. I will leave that, for the most part, to product reviewers. I find the navigation very straight forward and one to make a key point. The battery life has been great. Switching between Wi-Fi and Cellular, I have been able to get a full work day completed without a sweaty brow to the gas tank. It is very stable from an OS point of view, very lightweight, and with a little use, pretty intuitive.

What needs work?

- At some time, I would like to see the device and network have a much tighter approach to sensing and determining what network access is fastest without personal intervention. There are a lot of companies offering so-called “fixed-mobile convergence” solutions, but from where a common business person stands, they are highly klugey, particularly in the area of call control. The CUMC approach is much tighter than anything I have used and we have only released 1.1 Stay tuned for a range of new features and enhancements
-More corporate applications, faster, faster, faster. My buddies in IT have shown me the next generation of corporate applications that will be integrated into this device. To me, that is where the real money is.

What has this meant for me as a worker?

- It if fair to say that for most of the work day, I have stopped carrying my laptop. Although one would not compose the Declaration of Independence on the smart phone (although Robin Williams did try something similar in the movie RV), you can pretty much monitor and work all day around one of these devices
- The further integration of applications in these devices appears inevitable.

So dual mode fans, I would rate this first 6 months a solid B with a B+ for the device and a B- for the range of applications I am currently using.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:28 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

July 19, 2007

Mobility and the Connected Life

Mobility and the Connected Life
My partners on the service provider side of the Cisco house are sponsoring a contest called "Help Design Your Connected Life." We are inviting entries from people (ages 13 and older) to participate.

The idea behind the contest is to generate innovative ideas for a connected life (one of my favorites, using your cell phone to pay for your Starbuck's coffee). The contest runs through September 14, 2007. The grand prize is $10,000 and there are ten runner-up $1000 prizes being given away as well. We are accepting both written and video entries.

Note that Cisco employees (and their families) are not eligible to participate in the contest. Even those of us who blog!

The "official rules" are here.

So what do you think, do you have a good suggestion for the Connected Life?

Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:54 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

July 06, 2007

The RF Superhighway

In 1970, my uncle moved his branch of the clan out to Southern California, fleeing the dreaded Northeast winters, congestion and a dwindling set of personal opportunities (during a tough economic time). My father visited his brother in the sun-kissed paradise of a new suburb, watching my uncle brag: "look at all this land; look at these new roads and open space. This is paradise."

Forty years later, southern California, while still beautiful, has some of the worst commutes and densities of any metropolitan regions in the U.S. And, with the take off of Enterprise Wi-Fi and the continuing explosion of consumer wireless technologies (including, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and others), will the worldwide wireless market look like SoCal during rush hour or something less congested?

As we move into the mainstream era of WLAN in the Enterprise, the RF Management capabilities we pioneered during the WLAN era, couple with good analog engineering, including RF antenna design, RF interference detection and remediation, and the relationship between clients and access points will actually increase in importance rather than decrease. If someone tells you all the RF problems are licked, then:

1. Hide your wallet
2. Be prepared to live with a bad airspace

While we cannot expect an expanded set of users to become more RF knowledgeable (i.e., IT administrators, end users, guests), we do need to plan for systems that are.

Gentle readers, please weigh in with your thoughts here. Over the next few blogs, myself and fellow bloggers wille be weighing in here

Posted by Alan Cohen at 10:56 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

June 09, 2007

Mobilizing the Human Network: Part 1

Last week I finally go it. Mobility in the Web 2.0 world is about seamless integrating the experience between the physical world and the digital world when you are moving. Today, we have an increasing part of our economy dependent on information gathering, shopping, and now, creating community on the Internet. Leading merchants and commerce communities like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and CNET are blending product information, shopping and user reviews/comments to re-personalize the information and advice loop for a range of products.

Recently when deciding on a pair of replacement tires for a car, I used the message boards on http://TireRack.com to get the experience of several dozen prior owners. More significantly, I brought the information to my car dealer to show a fault pattern in my current set of tires. He questioned me on the results, so I pulled out my Nokia e61i and showed him the comments on TireRack.com (my dealer has a customer Wi-Fi network) The result: he replaced them, with the newer model for free.

What I increasingly see is a blending together of the digital world and the physical world for business, starting with a range of consumer commerce situations. The in-store shopping experience we delivered recently with Mediacart (http://www.mediacart.com) blended the information content and targeted marketing of an entire supermarket and its brands to an individual consumer, based on their location in the store. In this latter case, the WLAN enabled tablet on the front of the supermarket cart was the delivery vehicle.

What is interesting, what really is striking here, is that the drive to dual-mode smart phones and other devices, with larger and larger screens and simplified navigation schemes, is making every individual a potential commerce/community target in the Human Network. And the entrance of a larger and larger number of physical objects connected to networks through passive and active RFID as well as a range of emerging sensor technologies is putting things into play from a community sense.

If Descartes lived today and wrote about Mobility and the Human network, he might say: “I am there, connected, even when I move, therefore I am.”

My predicted evolution for this movement is something like this (I will be refining this over the next few weeks):

Consumer Commerce Applications (books, music, clothes)

Service/Consumption Industries (food, restaurants)

Tourism (travel spots)

Real-Estate

Business Applications (D&B to SAP)

Generationally, I think we are currently seeing a movement where folks under 25 are particularly adept in bringing their digital experience into full-body contact with their day-to-day personal lives, wherever and whenever we go. The growing access to pervasive high-speed wireless networks simply becomes a steroid in this emerging interaction.

If this idea makes you uncomfortable, remember the words of the great Beat writer Jack Kerouac on changes in society: “All of life is a foreign country.”

Posted by Alan Cohen at 08:57 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

May 31, 2007

Nature Will Find a Way: Security and Mobility

One of our readers wrote in recently on the Mobility Quotient to ask about security.

Actually, he was very prescient. Security is a top line issue for Mobility and came out strongly in the research. We found that most companies did not monitor their air space for wireless threats (e.g., rogue access points) and that many companies may have been out of compliance from a PCI/HIPPA or other regulatory perspective. In general, security, rather than cost, as an inhibitor to mobility initiatives, especially in large enterprises.

Since mobility is about freedom, like in all societies or systems, you want the assurance you are moving securely. As devices become more personalized and smaller, there is a greater risk involved in losing them. It is a real problem.

This is not a new argument, though.

When IBM introduced the PC decades ago, IT administrators accustomed to mainframe or mini-computers were terrified about the transition from “green screens” and secure “glasshouses” to computers that could be easily moved off the premises. We know the result of that battle: as the Sam Neill character said in Jurassic Park: “nature found a way.”

All of the solutions we have launched (not just in the past week) have both strong security and compliance approaches designed in -- rather than bolted on.

Stay tuned in this space for more debate on this subject.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 10:48 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 20, 2007

You Business Moves With You

“Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time.”
Guglielmo Marconi

This week we are bringing a new, expanded view of business mobility to the marketplace. Traditionally, mobility's chasm was a cell phone: most people defined mobility by the device they carried. While devices play a key role in how mobility can be experienced, mobility is more than cell phones or smart phones. It is more than wireless networks. It is more than voice applications or satellite communications. Business Mobility is being about to interact, to complete, to experience:

- collaboration among people,
- insight into data and processes, and
- awareness and utilization of assets (people or things)

These are capabilities tthat you would have when you are in the office, when, simply you are not – whether you are moving around your office/campus, are on the go, at home or half way around the world. Business Mobility is about the experience of business when you are not in the office. It is about experience not devices.

The great thing about mobility is how its removes the obstacles to communications derived by time and space -- it is, in Tom Friedman's words, "the great sterioid." One of the forces that flatten the world. But mobility is an innately human property. From birth, as soon as we can move, we crawl on all fours. We move across geographic, education, cultural, social and economic planes on a regular basis (someday we might actually teleport, across time and space). And when someone violates the rules of most societies, what do we do? We incarcerate them, hence immobilizing them.

The changing nature of business is driving business decision makers to adopt, to drive mobility in their businesses. Some key factors include:

- Large distributed global work forces, suppliers and customers
- The nomadic nature of much work
- Requirements for business continuity due to natural and man-made disasters
- The green movement driving us all to travel less, burn less fossil fuel

And most significantly, the changing work force drives mobility, The Mobility Generation that I have blogged about previously is changing the nature of work, of collaboration of when, where and how they work. In a business environment where there is a worldwide talent shortage, attracting and retaining talent, is a sine qua non for successful enterprises of all sizes. (http://blogs.cisco.com/wireless/2006/06/mobility_generation_a_fathers.html).

In addition, we are introducing the Mobility Quotient today: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/prod_052107.html?CMP=ILC-001 The Mobility Quotient baselines readiness to support today's mobile workforce in order to perform their job, no matter where they are - within the office, at home or on the go.

Cisco, working collaboratively with partners across the spectrum – application partners, system integrators, service provider partners, reseller partners -- is launching a new vision of mobility: one where you business moves with you, where rich collaboration is the starting point. An experience where technologies are designed to work together to support mobility – including wired and wireless networks, unified communications and security – where are baked in, not bolted on. It is a mobility play where services in the network such as location, identity, security, presence and device status are enablers of customer business processes. It is a mobility play where rich APIs (e.g., SOAP, XML) open the network for mobile business. And it was developed collaboratively, both within Cisco and with partners across the spectrum.

We drove mobility with a top down vision of how businesses work, then created solutions, and drove products to meet those needs. We did not start with a smartphone and said, define mobility around "this."

We also learned in a collaborative, Web 2.0, Mobile world, sometimes we would take the technology market, sometimes we would follows others leads. In industries like Retail and Oil and Gas, key technology and integration partners led and we followed. In other, horizontal collaboration mobility plays, we led the dance and asked partners to join us to richen the experience.

You do not have to visit our booth at Interop this week to lean about Cisco’s Business Mobility focus. You can tune into our Webcast or Second Life press conference from the show floor this Tuesday. There are a range of podcasts, VODs, press releases, white papers, and web links to allow you share our mobility experience wherever you, on any device, across any network, at any time. Details can easily be found at: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/index.html

Or as John Mayer sings

“One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change”

Wait No Longer. Now Business Mobility Changes Everything.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 12:33 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

May 07, 2007

Video in the Consumer Mobility Experience

On this blog, we tend to focus most heavily on the business mobility or business-class wireless experience. Given, at Cisco, we play a key role in the business IT marketplace, it is not surprising to work this aperture.

Mobility just as much as many social networking or Web 2.0 technologies really has a strong consumer angle. Even in the Enterprise WLAN segment was driven by the broadband rollout (extending the connection across the household) and was marketed brilliantly by Intel with its pervasive Centrino campaign.

When I look at my teenagers, I find they have a deeper and wider social fabric with their friends then I did at their age. My daughter writes a fashion blog that is read around the world and my son seems to run the Golden State Warriors middle school fan club from his cell phone via text messaging.

One of the key debates in the industry resides around the role video will play in Mobility. Despite Matt Glenn's non-furtive jabs at my perspective on video mail, I do think that a lot of consumer content may not be appropriate for the small screen and business applications will be. When the video iPod came out, I rushed to put a few films on it for a trip to Asia. What a rude surprise. Try watching Pirates of the Caribbean on a 2.5 inch square screen. Mobility is an extension of the Internet and the TV/Cable network, but it is not a substitute. While you may be willing to watch certain items on a small screen, it might be only when there is no alternative.

Interestingly, I think a lot of training and messaging Video-on-Demand (VODs) are probably highly appropriate, much more than entertainment or even sports. Real-time mobile face-to-face video conference will also be compellling, especially if the alternative is just a call. When the actual experience matters, the dramatic drop in flat panel pricing is one sweet gift. While lots of applications will morph to mobile devices, a smart phone is not a clean substitute for a computer or television monitor.

Yes, there are lots of hybrid devices – including those cool Sony Vaios – coming, but is Spiderman really Spiderman if you miss most of the web-spinning, falling-through-air approach.

So I think short video mails and training kinds of videos will take off on mobile devices, and we will see a reversal of trends where business markets lead consumer markets in video applications.

In the words of no less an entertainment genius than Groucho Marx:

“Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh... now you tell me what you know. “

Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:07 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 16, 2007

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen...but are felt in the heart....Helen Keller

Matt,
I think the big inhibitors here are probably more cultural, than technical.
Videomail is going to push a level of intimacy that the multi-tasking work may not love: we have to focus directly on those subjects we are communicating to/with. To me, this is the essence of why videomail will ultimately make it: in the cold, lonely reaches of cyberspace, people are looking for more intimate, direct connections with co-workers, friends and families (i.e., this is the heart of why we are moving to the human network, from the network of search and commerce). So for me, videomail, enabled with wireless networking is an act of faith; if you build it, they will come. http://www.fieldofdreamsmoviesite.com/

Let's tackle your issues, one at a time.

1. Cost: in the history of Moore's law, when has bandwidth costs not come down over time?

2. Application consistency: well the mash up world of the Internet is about living with inconsistencies. My cellphone "snaps, crackles and drops" every night as I hit the coverage hole on the road home. Do I drop the phone or redial?

3. Etiquette changes all the time, despite what Emily Post says http://www.emilypost.com/. The real is a matter of choice. Video when you can, email/voicemail when you must. It's the YOU decade, so communicate in the way you find most effective. Or in the words of the author of Peter Pan"

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves."
James M. Barrie

Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:15 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 07, 2007

Video Mail – The Beacons are Lit and Alan Will Answer

Matt, you must have been in a Wi-Fi Bubble these last few years. People have introduced all kinds of video mail in the last two years, including some of the Mobile Operators. As a colleague Hamada-san from Japan writes in, NTT DoCoMo introduced this capability with its FOMA phones over a year ago. :->

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/info/news_release/page/20060830a.html

So, let me throw down shot number 1….

The lack of available wireless broadband has been the biggest challenge for widespread adoption of mobile video applications. With the Municipal Wi-Fi avalanche picking up steam, for example, the large networks being built in Silicon Valley and Northern Singapore, as well as the continued build-out of HPSDA and 3G networks, we are going to see multiple, seamless carpets of inexpensive broadband in the airspace. Not complete, but coming.

Throwing down again…

As you noted, the wave of converged, dual-mode smart phones with high quality cameras (read, lots of pixels) will provide every mobile user with the change to quickly shoot off a quick vid. HAVEN’T you been on YouTube lately? If you want video mail, do not expect it all to come from PCs. When you are out and about, do you fire up your PC to leave someone a message?

Throwing down the third time (money shot)…

Unified Communications are just taking off and it is fair to say video is playing a large role. For the Hi-Def experience – and video, Matt, is about experience – we are rolling with Telepresence – but for the day-to-day localized video, we will see video mail starting to make its way into the mainstream over the next few years.

UC platforms will have the capability to allow you to communicate in a variety of methods. If you cannot play the video, a presence server, will in the future help strip out the audio piece and listen to it, using your phone or other mobile device, the way you would use an iPod. Voice/Text is here, already, and it’s pretty safe to suggest the total media rollout will be concommitent with UC deployments.

Video of all forms are moving from the realm of entertainment to business. And it’s not only bandwidth alone. Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) are now available to optimize the WAN (i.e., to improve video improvement), including technologies suchs as compression, redundancy elimination, transport optimizations, caching, and content distribution.

So you will get you vidmail. To paraphrase the great songwriter Mark Knopfler

We gotta install UC systems
IP phone deliveries
We gotta move TDM boat-anchors
We gotta move Wi-Fi to these color screens….

Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:44 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 25, 2007

Destination Dubai: Greenfield Mobility Market? (Part 2 of 2)

When you land in Dubai International Airport and drive into the city, the Emirate’s most telling landmark (and seemingly national bird!) is the building crane. An enormous metropolis of office towers, shopping malls and man-made islands is rapidly rising from the desert floor. While building cranes feedstock the rapid construction of skyscrapers, the definition of a crane is “a device for lifting and moving heavy weights in suspension.”

To this observer, the most remarkable heavy weight in motion in Dubai is the rapid transition of a tribal, desert culture -- albeit one that is found on thousands of years of trading and more recently, hydrocarbon wealth -- into a modern, service-oriented economy. The country’s leadership well understands this challenge and is in overdrive to make this transition.

Mobility, thus, is one of the critical underpinnings of any service-based, including the one that is occurring in Dubai:

- Mobility of capital
- Mobility of people (information capital, http earlier blog)
- Mobility of communications

Capital is flowing into the Emirates, followed by large numbers of services workers and new residents. The country seemingly, too, has a voracious appetite for communications technologies as well.

From our little keyhole, we are watching to see if Dubai embraces new empowering technologies like the Mobile Internet and Wi-Mesh, providing a blanket of secure broadband into the emerging canyons of the new downtown district. This will should not be a big stretch, as these kinds of first mile technologies could be used off-shore where new islands must be connected to the Internet (first mile wireless is already being piloted on oil rigs in other parts of the Middle East).

With it’s influx of mobile, entrepreneurial new residents, mobile devices are likely to be the norm rather than reliance of a fixed infrastructure. New applications like Mobile Instant Messaging seem like a natural to a competitive culture like Dubai, which also must compete with its hydrocarbon-rich neighbors that have similar visions of technology-laden modern cities rising from the ground. In addition, wishing to stay in touch with family and friends back home, these new residents are likely to turn to social networking and video technologies to build a stronger community and family bond across geographies and time zones. The challenge for Dubai is to support the mobile identity of its new residents as well as distinct country-centric view of itself.

We developed the Mobility Quotient (http://cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/products_promotion0900aecd805e9101.html) to understand how well businesses are taking advantage of mobility technologies. Perhaps the MQ for an entire nation lies in its ability to take the best of the old (culture, values, working systems, etc.) and blend it with the technologies, best practices and human empowerment of what is new. In Dubai, I think the country’s Mobility Quotient will ultimately be measured in how well the commercial and public sector can marshal and utilize the best of what the world has to offer while it continues to build both a national and a global identity. So far the nation seems off to a fast start with lots of repeatable successes.

Proverbs tend to be re-used in many cultures. Over 20 years ago, a Qatari classmate of mine shared an Arab proverb: “Anything that happens once does not necessarily happen again, everything that happens twice is likely to happen for the third time as well.”

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:05 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 11, 2007

Destination Dubai: Human Software as a Mobility Service (Part 1 of 2)

In The World is Flat, Tom Friedman writes about how human as well as digital “software” is required to make a society work. This includes: medical care, education, effective legal systems, etc.

I am just back from my first trip to Dubai and can affirm that the Emirates, in addition to building the world’s largest buildings and shopping malls, are pioneering another first: transforming human software into a service through importing and maintaing human talent.

At roughly 15% -20% of the total population, native born Emiratis might seem scare in the hyper development scene of Dubai. Most of the people I met on this first trip came from someone else, lured by Dubai’s dramatic economic development, career opportunities and tolerant society.

For most people in the technology industry, the definition of mobility usually involved cell phones, Wi-Fi, RFID or application access. In Dubai (where the cellphone coverage was excellent and the bandwidth from the hotel, adequate), there are other interesting forms of Mobility.

- Capital is pouring into Dubai from all over the Arab and Western world, leading to an avalanche of building cranes working steadily to build apartments and office buildings that are sold out 1-3 years in advance of construction

-People are flocking to work and live in the Emirates. The UAE population is expected to grow by 3.3% per annum to reach 4.15 million by 2010. Dubai is expected to have a population of 1.4 million by 2010 (up from roughly 1 million today).

-Property ownership is liberalizing and being extended to non-Gulf citizens, allowing them to purchase freehold property in certain areas. By allowing freehold ownership the Dubai government hopes to attract more skilled professionals to stay in the Emirate

So far this model seems to be working. On a visit to a university, I found an American CIO, a Singaporean-raised Indian running the network and an Egyptian woman in charge of application development. They were all interested in driving pervasively wireless connectivity throughout the school

The UAE has shown great foresight in transforming their depleting hydrocarbon wealth into a nation built on thriving economic and leisure industries. The open question is will the human software also transplant, creating long-term advantages to the economic development of the gulf nation. No that is mobility.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 12:36 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 25, 2007

Into Thin Air: Mobility, the NBA and Fans in the Human Network

Last weekend I had the distinct labor of co-hosting the NBA All-Star Game for Cisco (methinks the blogger doth protest too disingenuously). While much of the weekend's focus was on the physical pyrotechnics of the slam dunk, celebrity sightings, and very, very cool parties with tall people, there was another key angle to this pinnacle of sports and entertainment, the NBA Technology Summit. Arch entrepreneur and NBA Commissioner David Stern made it clear he was in touch with role the Internet and Mobility would be playing the future of the league. He noted that much of the world would be reaching the Internet, hence the NBA, from the cell phones going forward, not from PCs.

When the Commissioner of the NBA recognizes his future is the mobile web, it’s not hard to see why. Sports fans are intensely involved with their favorite leagues and teams. I caught up to WNBA Superstar Lisa Leslie (http://www.wnba.com/playerfile/lisa_leslie/) on the break and over a soda discussed her interest in the subject. She told me that basketball fans are “always on the new thing.” Toronto Raptor forward Chris Bosh led a discussion on why fans were always asking for personal information non him (like what cereal he ate and what video games he played) that was answered by Magic Johnson. Magic noted: “because kids want to be like you, they want immediate information so they can one up their friends by showing how much in touch they are with you.”

It is clear that progressive sports organizations, rather than fight this move to mobility, are going to exploit it in building their brands. And plenty of people, including venture capitalists, financial analysts and the media were on hand to soak in the implications. For the NBA the focus was less on potential programming – there was a terse, uneventful Q&A on the no-show ESPN Mobile Device announced a year ago – but on the future role advertising could play in this mobile sports works. The top keynote of the morning was no less than Google CEO Eric Schmitt, who was on hand to share his views and take some pretty serious questions of the financial implications of this shift of the advertising model as well as payment models for NBA video.

While much of the industry debates where the financial mode for Metro Mesh networks will come from, maybe some of it will come from the NBA?

Although the summit was a strictly off the record event, David Stern was clear on one quotable area: “I can say is that in this wonderful age of wireless, of video on demand, on the device formally known as the cell phone, which is now a handheld device, at a time when the statistics are overwhelming that there will be soon two billion people on cell phones with the third generation, to have compelling content -- which is our game -- means that our game is going to be brought to fans in ways that not only that we couldn't have anticipated, but we probably couldn't have imagined, and that's all good on a global scale.”

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:40 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 15, 2007

"The Prosumer" in the Human Network

One of the clearest human derivatives of the Human Network -- enabled by mobility -- is the increasing breakdown of the wall between our personal and our work lives. As our brand campaign reminds people, “work is an activity, not a place.”

The ability to work, when you need to work, wherever you need to work now means wireless networks, security, and unified communications now provide seamless access to people, assets and critical information. Now you can:

- Catch up on a product development project at a coffee shop on vacation

- Get a message from your kids they arrived safely home from school during a snowstorm, even when you are in a foreign country on business

- Set up a 3 way video call with your team around the world.

Now your business moves with you.

There is a second order derivative that goes with this mobile transformation. For many, how they define themselves, from a technology usage perspective is changing. The traditional segmentation that you might get in a market research study tends to put you in 1 of 3 categories consumer, business or student. However, technology is bleeding across these categories and how you define yourself is changing. My favorite definition of this dissolution is the “prosumer.” People are now professionals and consumers at the same time.

From a mobility point of view, the requirement is to have the same IT resources, applications, services and security available to me wherever I am. Effectively, this means I want to be as effective professionally when I am not in the office than when I am in the office. As a consumer, I want to be able to run my life when I am not home.

In the next few blogs, stay tuned for some perspectives on how technology must adapt to meet the people requirements of this evolving world.

Things are going to get mixed up, As Mark Twain said in Following the Equator

“The compass in my head has been out of order from my birth . . . In me the east was born west, the battle-plans which have the east on the right-hand side are of no use to me.”

Posted by Alan Cohen at 11:19 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 10, 2007

Other Technologies

Dave Binetti asks:

"I've seen these posts as well as others you've written on the concept of localization (like with the Stockholm subway project and RFID.) How do other technologies that are wireless and lower-power (like Zigbee) factor in to the equation? Do they stand a chance against ubiquitous WiFi? Or are things like 802.11n too power-hungry to get the job done alone?"

It is a very good question.

I think other wireless technologies clearly will play a role in the development of innovative applications and lowerpower approaches provide entries to an order of magnitude addition of new things (i.e., the Internet of Things) that are attached to both wired and wireless IP networks. The open question is

1. What is the timing for their mass commercialization
2. What we can do to add them to the growing pervasive WLAN networks emerging all over the world

Readers, thoughts on innovation or other comapnies you have seen playing a role here?

Posted by Alan Cohen at 08:29 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 04, 2007

SuperBowl of Wireless: WiMAX vs. Wi-Fi Why Not Both?

It's Sunday morning and most my household is quiet, clinging tightly to the last drops of sleepy refreshment from the Sandman, the bringer of dreams and rest. For many sports fans, today is the big day where the pageantry, where the competition, achievement and hype play onto the world stage of media: the Superbowl. It's not called the national championship. It's not called the world championship. It’s the SUPERbowl, invoking images of cartooned, masked superheroes battling for the forces of good and evil.

Clearly Football's Superbowl is one of the pinnacles of competitive sports, but at the end of the day, one team will win and one will lose (kind of, as both teams make a lot of money along the way). This year’s bout is a conundrum, as the teams are relatively evenly matched. The Cinderella Bears – how is that for twisting a few fairy tales – are led by a defense second to none and the Indianapolis Colts are led by a potential Hall of Fame Quarterback’s offense.

It’s a bit like the discussion about Wi-Fi and WiMAX.

Wi-Fi is the Chicago Bears
Wi-Fi is rapidly becoming the Ethernet of wireless technologies, where are an open standard is driving innovation across the entire value chain as it becomes faster (.11n), more robust (MIMO), more secure (.11i, w). This year the industry is expected to ship as many chips in devices as it did over the past several years combined. The relatively cost advantages of a shared connection have driven the hospitality and entertainment industry to start to offer it like a utility to their guests. Last week, I sat down with the CIO of an international movie theater chain that was preparing to roll it out so people could be connected in the common areas of the theater to enhance the entertainment value of their venues (I thought the movies and the popcorn were the experience!). Enterprises are rolling out secure access so contractors, customers and suppliers can share their networks. With this growing pervasiveness, Wi-Fi has a killer defense – try to take it out – and a pretty good offense as well.

WiMAX is the Indianapolis Colts
After several years of hype and a past 18 months of pilots, WiMAX is moving closer to being a tremendously powerful wireless technology in a lot of areas. Not likely going replace cellular technology any time soon as a primary air interface for telephony and mobile data in developed markets and nations, WiMAX represents a potential disruptive force in the emerging world, where the wiring, well, just does not exist. In developed markets like Europe, which are wired/unwired through the mobile telephony company’s hundreds of billions of investment in spectrum, equipment and pull-through of corresponding handsets, the marginal costs of competing with a brand new spectrum technology are pretty low. The same is true with fixed line DSL, Cable and FTTH technologies. It’s hard to compete with installed and depreciated plant.

However, in emerging markets like India, China and the Middle East, where wired broadband connections are not going to come anytime soon, the innovation and investment in WiMAX are starting to look pretty attractive. The governments and companies that operate in the world where broadband does not exist clearly understand the economic levers WiMAX technology will bring to a region’s development socially and economically. On those playing fields, WiMAX has a strong passing game, able to make up some broadband yardage in a hurry.

Superbowls, however, are not won either singularly by offenses or defenses alone. It takes a bit of both. Hence I see these two technologies playing a critical role working together: think of it as a wireless ProBowl (all-star) team. Today we are combining WiMAX as a backhaul technology for Wi-Fi Mesh. In other parts of the world, WiMAX looks to be the outdoor provider of choice and be distributed in-building by Wi-Fi. Both support data well, today, are becoming optimized for voice, and some day might be able to support robust, pervasive video, although the latter is tough to predict.

If you are a fan of football history, you know the Superbowl is the breeding ground of upsets. The one burned into my psyche as a youth was the 1968 Superbowl where “Broadway Joe” Namath took the New York Jets to a surprise victory over the Baltimore Colts (the predecessor of today’s Indianapolis team). And we must also remember there is a third team on the ground: today’s 2G/3G cellular industry, which is moving to an IPRAN and its own designs on winning the Superbowl of wireless. Will it partner with or co-opt Wi-Fi/WiMAX s as it evolves? Well, that’s what makes today’s game so much fun.

Go wireless!

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:34 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

January 21, 2007

All Technology and Politics are Local: Wi-Fi in the Home, Part Two

For all intents and purposes, the Wi-Fi revolution started in the home, rather than in the office (some would say it started in the supply chain industries, but it was a pretty niche technology in terms of numbers). Propelled by a very rich Intel Centrino marketing budget, the avalanche of wireless-enabled laptops and available hotspots, propelled the much connected wireless lifestyle. According to the Yankee Group, Wi-Fi hot spots will grow to over 70,000 in 2007, a 2300% increase from 2002.

As we move to the ratification of 802.11n, we are now beset by a rich variety of “pre-N” home Wireless LAN options. While it is unwise to select a pre-standard Access Point for use in the office – large scale, forkliftable incompatibility is a bad thing – there is lots of room for experimentation at home.

There are 2 key elements to emerging technology worth looking at:

- Faster air-link speed
- Better performance through the use of Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas.

While your home DSL or Cable Modem connection is not going to take much advantage of this kind of speed – think about it as a new 300 HP Mustang creeping along during rush hour -- this second area, better performance, is particularly interesting, as beam steering/switching approaches turn traditional wireless negatives such as multi-path into more reliable, robust signal around your place. Streaming video from your set-top or home router to your experience devices (TV, music system, PC, gaming platform) does open up a world of possibilities.

My prediction is the devices that come to your home this year and beyond will reset expectation for wireless and work, driving the next generation of business-class wireless to then make it scaleable, manageable, and of course, secure. Look to a 2008/2009 for this push into the Enterprise, just proving that history does repeat itself.

The other key trend here is that the growing individualization of technology (some would call it consumerization) is upon us, reversing the traditional business-home technology migration curve that we saw in the computing industry. Or to borrow a little from former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Thomas P (TIP) O’Neill: “all technology is local.” At least now it is.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 09:18 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

January 11, 2007

In the Human Network, A Picture is Worth a Million Bytes

Photographs and memories
Christmas cards you sent to me
All that I have are these
To remember you

- Jim Croce, Photographs and Memories

Welcome to 2007 fellow bloggers. For many of us, holidays are a time of family get togethers, of remembrances of things past. Another year passes and we remember old friends and loved ones.

Thanks to a tip from fellow Wi-Fi Blogger, Glen Fleishman http://wifinetnews.com/, I have just learned that Kodak, has released a Wi-Fi enabled picture frame, where you can stream pictures via that trusty 802.11 protocol from your computer to any where you want in the house or office. http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=10554&pq-locale=en_US

Not only does this mean that you entire digital library is now fair game, I hope over time, your can connect some kind of RFID or identity system. Think of it: when my brother visits, all the frames in the house can automatically change to pictures of his (we agree) adorable kids.

It is over 125 years ago since, George Eastman set up his first factory, having perfected the dry plate process for photography. It was a revolution in being able to communicate on a mass market basis through pictures. He would have loved the Wi-Fi-enabled frame. Eastman was a lifelong bachelor, a tinkerer and a restless soul. He did give us one of more memorable quotes about work and life:

"What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are."

Posted by Alan Cohen at 05:19 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 21, 2006

Top 10 Enterprise Mobility Predictions for 2007

"I always avoid prophesying beforehand because it is much better to prophesy after the event has already taken place. "
--Winston Churchill

It is the time of the year where many of us are sprinting -- or crawling on all fours -- to the rest and rewards of the holidays. Seeing today is the winter solstice, I thought it an apt time to post my top 10 predictions for Enterprise Mobility for 2007. As the days start, again, to lengthen, let us see how accurate these will prove.

1. 2007 will be the year mobility means more than cell phones. For most people, mobility is exclusively tied to our mobile phones. While voice communications clearly will be one of the key drivers for enterprise mobility for many years to come, I think we saw a lot of other activity in 2006 that suggests more will be afoot next year. Access to horizontal business applications like SAP as well as specialized vertical applications in healthcare, insurance, government and every other industry will become the next drive. And as varied as the applications are, so we will see the utilization of lots of other mobile devices, including PDAs and mini-PCs (http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_BrowseCatalog-Start?CategoryName=cpu_VAIONotebookComputers_UX_Series&Dept=computers). In addition, emerging consumer variation of platforms like gaming devices – as we saw in the entrance of the Sony MYLO – will appear in 2007.

2. Mobility services, more than access technologies, will drive the growth of wireless and mobile technologies. In 2006, Cisco introduced the concept of “mobility solutions.” Although Internet and LAN access has driven much of the push for secure wireless services, we saw our work in context-rich applications such as location-based asset tracking really start to take off (expect integrated GPS services also to start to play bigger). Also, rich handoffs and variations of unified communications services are likely to be a big winner next year as will guest services. Stay tuned for 4 new services in 2007.

3. Mobility will become more about the experience. At their inception, we accepted performance trade-offs for the use of mobile networks and devices (remember, the opening jingle of the cellular industry 30 years ago was snap, crackle and drop!). But with increasing capability and quality, the bar has been raised. Increasingly, the performance of mobile networks is becoming richer, more bulletproof and bandwidth/QOS rich. To this, expect companies to take advantage of a more robust infrastructure by developing applications that are more mobile-aware as well as conditioned to take advantage of some of the inherent capabilities in mobility. For example, companies will make significant investments in making their webpages and internet-based applications appear/perform better on mobile (non-PC devices) as well as take advantage of mobility to provide location specific information in both business-to-business (e.g., municipal information systems) as well as business-to-consumer applications (e.g., local services)

4. Expect significant increases in enterprise-wide (pervasive) WLAN deployments. As many of the initial security and management/performance issues for WLANs have been solved – and the cloud hanging over them dispersed -- businesses of all sizes will see WLANs as mission-critical, specifying them in, alongside wired networks, as key infrastructure. Expect pervasive deployments to grow faster in the “office vertical” than the market growth rate for WLAN.

5. Emerging markets will lead the way in wireless broadband as a primary access infrastructure. In many emerging markets, wireless data networks, including Wi-Fi Mesh as well as WiMAX, along with cellular, will offer new alternatives for primary broadband access. In existing markets with strong wired infrastructure, the marginal costs of adding new subscribers are very low. In markets without wired broadband, wireless technologies could prove very interesting, economically, as an alternative to wiring.

6. Network Identity will emerge as a critical component of mobility services. Increasingly how you “are served” on the network will depend on who you are. Mobile network services will now offer services (bandwidth/QoS, security), capabilities (based on location or presence) and application access by knowing who you are.

7. Gaming approaches will support mobile networks. As the generation of workers weaned on Internet or multi-party gaming join the work force, expect them to use mobile technologies to change the nature of work. So, lest you think I launched into spiked eggnog too early, let me explain. What is interesting about gamers is how they form together to start a game (guild). The leader (guild master) puts the game in play and then dissolves it when it is over. The next game may be led by another leader. To wit, project work can integrate people and information from a broad range of environments, whether people are in the same network or company, or whether than are in another country on a wireless connection.

8. The hype around mobile TV and advertisements will give way to corporate mobile video. With all due respect to the people watching ESPNMobile, I think a lot of short video may come from corporations reaching people via non-pc devices. What could be more useful than a salesperson about to go in being able to watch a video of the company’s best salesperson pitching their newest product on their TREO for 2 ½ minutes. Increasingly, video is making its way into business training and communications, not just YouTube, and that is something people will pay for

9. Cellular operators will become open to new wireless access technologies. Although many cellular equipment vendors tried to cause a WLAN v. cellular technology religion debate over the past few years, increasingly carriers are looking at newer technologies as a way to deliver broadband data and other services. One of the clearest examples of this is SingTel’s decision to build a Wi-Fi mesh network across Northern Singapore.

10. Mobility will help drive the Internet of Things. Although much of the discussion around mobile technologies focuses on people communicating with people or people accessing information, increasingly devices talking to other devices is becoming important. This is the critical underpinning behind RFID and Active WLAN tags. In 2007, the language of location and tags will move more to asset optimization and the one of the critical aspects of Web 2.0: bringing analog assets into the digital world. What this last point means is that sensors, RFID and other capabilities will allow billions and billions of assets (goods, badges, blade servers, subway cards – you name it) to be recognized by the network and hence provide data and insight into how systems are run and lives take place. This will ultimately mean the 400M WLAN devices in service today will look like a drop in the bucket in comparison to the hundreds of billions or trillions of devices connected through wireless and mobile networks. Now, that sounds like Enterprise Mobility

Posted by Alan Cohen at 11:50 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

December 07, 2006

Wlcm 2 d HNK

Wlcm 2 d HNK
hEr Mobility wiL chAng how we communicate.
LOL
Mobility changes evryting
TWT whether we ll comnC8 dis wA
bt we ll knw tttt
As d mobility gNR8N enters d wrk 4S
CMIIW
u myt sA Im %-),
ppl r gunA stop spkg n ryTN n sentences?
Im :-K
wel, d ability 2 comnC8 n real tym, W msngr clients, smrt fons n cmputAs S changiN d nature of lang, cr8ing a wrld of messengerists
n biz wl nvr B d same
:@
f u cn msg, yr biz cn mve w/u
;(
f I cn lern it, so cn u
tym 2 TCOB

And now, the translation:

Welcome to the human network.
Here Mobility will change how we communicate
LOL
Mobility changes everything
Time will tell whether we all communicate this way
But we all know these things take time
As the mobility generation enters the work force
Call me if I am wrong
You might say I am confused,
People are going to stop speaking and writing in sentences?
I am puzzled
Well, the ability to communicate in real time, with messenger clients, smart phones and computers is changing the nature of language, creating a world of messengerists
And business will never be the same
It’s true
If you can message, your business can move with you
Chin up
If I can learn it, so can you
Time to take care of business

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:34 PM Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

November 29, 2006

The Outdoor Shoot-Out That Did Not Occur

Today Cisco made an announcement about a very large Wi-Fi Mesh network that is going to be deployed by SingTel and the InfoCom authority of Singapore http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/global/asiapac/news/2006/pr_11-29.html?CMP=AFC-001&vs_f=News@Cisco:%20News%20Releases&vs_p=News@Cisco:%20News%20Releases&vs_k=1

Rather than reflect on the news, I would like to fast foward 3 years and try to tackle a burning question in the marketplace today: will outdoor Wi-Fi canablize cellular services.

My personal belief is absolutely not.

We are increasingly moving into an era where the issue the issue is not Cellular or Wi-Fi, but Cellular and Wi-Fi. Fast forward 3 years, and it will be Cellular and Wi-Fi and WiMAX. As devices become smarter, able to move seamless across differ RF and Wired network networks, increasingly being able to deliver seamless, un-interrupted services, we will see these services coexist.

Much of the investment going into public, unlicensed services are predicated upon a range of new users for data services. Over time, voice is likely to come as well. Client technology will improve and also contribute to supporting latency sensitive applications.

The interesting issue, is that the spectrum, interference, reliability and operations issues are common across these networks. There are benefits and pitfalls of operating at different frequencies (e.g., higher frequency, smaller cell size) as well as if the spectrum is shared or dedicated. To wit, much of the hype around WiMAX is around whether unlicensed WiMAX will take off. For many of the applications being discussed, licensed WiMAX makes more sense. Wi-Fi, to wit, was concieved for a busy environment where users must live with interference within the efforts to share the spectrum established by the standard.

One of the myths during the early Internet era was would it kill television. It turned out people consumed more media, not less. Cable is killing network television. It is about choice..

What do you think readers? As Mark Twain noted: "Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities."

Posted by Alan Cohen at 10:51 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 19, 2006

Leaves Falling, Turkey, One Man's Quest for the Boys of Summer

Here in the U.S. we are easing toward the Thanksgiving Holiday, a traditional meal and gathering at the close of Harvest season. In the Livermore valley, the grape leaves are gold, red and brown, shriveing into to the relatively mild season that passes for winter here in Northern California. U.S. traditions peg the Thanksgiiving holiday to a meal held in 1621 by the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Perhaps a mythic event, it represents the best of what we believe in our nation: that we can share the land, share in our nation's bounty and respect our neighbors, no matter what color, creed or religous belief they hold.

For me, however, Thanksgiving time has one flaw: it the holiday that celebrates the football game (including the backyard football game of my extended family). Now, don't get me wrong, I love football, but I always wondered why we did not play babeball on Thanksgiving. Baseball is America's "past-time," and when Abraham Lincoln declared thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1863 baseball was a well known AMERICAN sport with established teams and rules. An even older sport, football was played in various forms apparently since 600 A.D., with a strong thread running through the British Isles.

In addition to my baseball yearnings for Thanksgiving, another great American (and our boss) John Chambers marked a breakthrough event for sports and technology fans, everywhere, with the announcement of Cisco field. In the next few years, the Oakland As will be moving south to Fremont to take residence in what I can only imagine will be the most technologically sophisticated ballpark/stadium in the world. It was a rich table of sport and technology he laid not only for Silicon Valley, but all of the world.

The 34,000-seat Cisco Field will feature a wireless network on which fans can use handheld devices to watch instant replays, order food and beverages, communicate with friends, and keep score. Fans will be able to buy tickets online, receive their ticket as a file on a smartphone to show at the gate, and visit kiosks inside the stadium to upgrade their seats. Stadium employees will use other handheld communicators that use radio-frequency identity (RFID) technology to locate and talk to each other.

"This is about how we take America’s favorite pastime and enable it for where the future will be," Chambers at the announcement, accompanied by A's owner Lewis Wolff, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and others. He added that as many as 80 technology applications have been considered for the stadium.

Completion of the new stadium, near Cisco's San Jose headquarters, may be three to five years away. Cisco is also weighing which technology companies it will will partner with to develop the platform for Cisco Field. Similar Cisco technology is deployed at Busch Stadium, the home field of WORLD SERIES CHAMPION baseball's St. Louis Cardinals in St. Louis, Missouri. http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/index.jsp?c_id=stl

Technology, especially wireless technology, is permeating and influencing every aspect of our lives. In John Chambers' words "consumers are embracing technology in their work and home environments, more now than ever before, and we believe that technology can have a major impact on the fan experience at ballparks as well. Today, there is a certain expectation from fans that new athletic facilities have cutting-edge technology. Cisco and the A's will be setting new standards in terms of the field and the surrounding village...we can leverage both entertainment and sports to showcase the value of the network to enhance the fan experience."

Now, pass the gravy and stuffing. This thanksgiving we can celebrate, sport, family, community and technology together here in the Bay area.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 01:42 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

November 05, 2006

In RF Veritas: Wine, Wireless and "Lovers' Cups"

Recently, I read an article where a Boston Back Bay seafood restaurant's guests were getting a kick out of the “Wine Skipper”: 12-inch touch screen device with Wi-Fi enabled that is used in conjunction with a hard copy of the restaurant’s wine list. http://www.celebrate-wine.com/50226711/computer_picks_your_wine.phpThe system's high-speed connection to the internet allows users to access not only the websites of every winery on the list, but also reviews, descriptions and pairing suggestions for every label. The goal was to informationalize the wine selection process for patrons, table-side, including reviews of boutique wineries, including some in my neck of the woods, the Livermore Valley of Northern California. More significantly, it can make any wine layperson sound like Robert Parker through a few taps on a screen.

This story made me remember some other "wine and wireless" experiences I have had or noted over the past few years.

Although not technically a real-time wireless service, in 2000, Wine.Com launched a channel on the AvantGo Mobile Internet Service. This provided users with a platform to purchase wine during wired or wireless synchronization. It started modestly with several dozen wines from around the world and included tasting notes from noted experts (now, how do I get a job like this). At the time, then Wine.Com CEO Bill Newlands noted this application as an example of how “cutting-edge technology can change the 4,000 year-old wine business."

A few years afterwards, one vineyard owner, Don King, used wireless sensors to coax 30,000 plants to grow grapes of exactly the right color, size and sweetness to produce great ice wine and other fine vintages...with the help of judicious watering, a knowledge of the age-old art of viniculture. The electronic sensors were linked together in a wireless network using an Intel-based TinyOS and TinyDB, allowing the multiple sensing devices to monitor grape micro climates and help determine irrigation and frost patterns.

Around the same time, in Washington, D.C., Schneiders of Capitol Hill pioneered the world's first wireless wine shop with a Phoenix, Ariz.-based restaurant industry interface. TasteNtalk provided the technology to allowe the inventory from Schneider's 7,500-square-foot wine cellar to be available for buyers with Web-enabled wireless phones. The service has subsequently morphed into a more general online wireless service for restaurant ordering.

Last year the IntelliScanner Corporation introduced the Wine Collector 150, a personal handheld barcode scanner with included wine management software for Mac OS X and Windows. By simply scanning the retail bar code found on a bottle of the wine with the USB or Bluetooth wireless IntelliScanner barcode reader, the system then downloads the name, varietal, winery, country, type, color, and region, in a computer database. The technology offering provides:
- Personal wine inventory management:
- Access to a 62,000 wine database

And finally, earlier this year, two researchers at the MIT Media Lab have developed a set of Wi-Fi Wine glases that incorporate a variety of coloured LEDs, liquid sensors and wireless (GPRS or Wi-Fi) links into a pair of glass tumblers allowing long-distance sweethearts to share some intimacy with vino even when they are not together in the same room or even the same continent. http://web.media.mit.edu/~jackylee/cups.htm When either person picks up the one of the so-called "lovers' cups,"red LEDs on their partner's glass glow gently. And when either puts the glass to their lips, sensors make white LEDs on the rim of the other glass glow brightly, so you can tell when your other half takes a sip.

I don't know about you, but wireless and wine makes me feel warm all over (and that has little to do with the fact that 2.4Ghz is the same frequency as a microwave oven). Time to meander over to the cellar.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 08:23 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 27, 2006

That rabbit's got a vicious streak. It's a killer!

"That is not an ordinary rabbit ... 'tis the most foul cruel and bad-tempered thing you ever set eyes on."
Monthy Python and the Holy Grail

OK gentle readers, it’s Friday and we are closing in on Halloween. For your Wi-Fi weekend, I would offer up one of the strangest toys to hit he market, Nabaztag, the first smart (read Wi-Fi) rabbit. Recently introduced this RF bunny uses a Wi-Fi connection and text-to-speech software to read things like RSS, e-mails and weather reports out loud. http://new.nabaztag.com/en/m-2-nabaztag-how-does-he-work.html

As reported in CNET and other sites, some Nabaztag users in France have created their own online community with a MySpace.com-like atmosphere in which they share photos of their smart rabbit and its environment. Nabaztag members apparently have been orchestrating flash-mob-type happenings. Up to 100 people often show up with smart rabbits in tow

No only is this the first convergence device to blend unlicensed spectrum and Pokemon-like cuteness. Don’t take my word for it, check out the photo gallery on TechRepublic. http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-1035_11-30628.html
OK, I like Wi-Fi as much as the next RF nut, but this is a trick or treat must. Caveat emptor: it’s a $150 to play.

Happy Halloween.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 10:52 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

October 15, 2006

RF and the Highway System

Over the past few months there have been 2 distinct technical threads in the wireless industry regarding RF. There are those who claim all RF problems will be solved in the standards bodies, a rote exercise for chip and system manufacturers building wireless products. There are others – including myself --who believe the real RF challenges are still in front of us and still remain to be solved. At the Bard of New England, Robert Frost suggested, oh Mobility Blog faithful, there is your role: “a jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.”

The explosion of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mobile (and stationary devices) attaching to RF networks continues to explode, particularly increasing issues in the unlicensed 2.4Ghz band. ABI Research predicts that the 40 million+ devices that ship with Wi-Fi today will explode to 250 million in the next 5 years. This means computers, smart phones, infusion pumps, sensors, game consoles, etc. That’s a lot of beaconing going on. That’s a lot of devices sharing a limited set of frequencies.

The 160,000 miles of roadways in the U.S. are critical to the nation’s economy and security much as our precious spectrum is. Hence I believe increasingly these frequencies will face the same challenges of our nation’s highway system, which for the most part was the brainchild of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt but really took off under President Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/50interstate.cfm

Think about all of these 802.11 devices like cars. In 1950, there were less than 50 million vehicles on the road. Today, there are over 250 million passenger vehicles in service on America's roads.

Frequencies are a lot like roads. They are not easily added (there are other uses for the land, even with the power of eminent domain) and crowded during rush hours. Even if we could more frequencies, it is not the answer.

Just as smart traffic management systems including car pooling, public transportation and intelligent routing will play a key role in keeping the flow of vehicles on the road flowing -- lest we constrain our children to a future of endless gridlock -- smart RF management systems are required if we are going to realize the future pervasive wireless networks. An excellent view on this is provided by our own Bob Friday and Cognio's Neil Diener in a short video http://tools.cisco.com/cmn/jsp/index.jsp?id=54768&redir=YES&userid=(none)

Jury, you choose.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:14 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 28, 2006

My Life Online

Last week I received my long awaited Sony mylo (which stands for My Life Online, and is NOT CAPITALIZED), a personal communicator that used Wi-Fi rather than Cellular technologies to support its communications capabilities. The mylo, according to Sony's marketing spiel, allows you to put the "entire world under your thumbs" (take that, Mick Jagger), and allows you to "take the best part of your computer with you" wherever you go.

http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/mylo/prod/index.html

While I will let Sony do the heavy lifting here in describing all the cool capabilities of the mylo-- and there is a lot going on in this device including email, music, video/photos, chat, etc. -- what is interesting about this device it that it has not linkage to the cellular world and only uses Wi-Fi hotspots to gain connectivity to the Internet. Indeed, the PSP/Gameboy meets Sidekick meets Pager meets IPod's primary communications tools are Instant Messenger and Voice Messaging from Google(talk), Yahoo and Skype.

A true child of the Web 2.0 Revolution, the mylo assumes voice and text messaging will be free and that access to the Internet will also come from Hotspots, which could be free or for pay. It bundles a JWire application to help you find open hotspots by geography. Okay, the real world, today, does not work that way, but as Hemingway intoned at the end of The Sun Also Rises: "isn't it pretty to think so."

Call this the first "crossover" device of the Mobility Generation, it's an opening salvo in the shape of things to come for computing, communications and gaming. http://blogs.cisco.com/wireless/2006/06/mobility_generation_a_fathers.html

Imperfect and expensive, like all first generation miracles, it has the whiff of the inevitable. As the gamers and Mobility Generation enter the workforce, they will increasingly dictate not only how we communicate, but how we work, carrying the openness of youth into the mores of the work world. And, like the earlier generation, which brought PCs into the workforce, against the wishes of IT management, we will be under their thumb.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 07:55 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 21, 2006

Green Day for Wi-Fi, For Cisco

I was walking up 8th Avenue in Manhattan yesterday, listening to Green Day on my IPod, as I wove my way through the pedestrian tango of Midtown.

“Time grabs you by the wrist and directs you where to go”

I grabbed Unstrung’s Dan Jones by his wrist and pulled him into the new Hearst Tower, which has been officially designated the first building to receive a Gold LEED certified rating for "core and shell and interiors" in New York City from the United States Green Building Council. Building on a series of "diagrid" traingles, reaching upwards, like a series of giant glass and metal slashes 46 stories into the sky, the Hearst Tower is a marvel of technology, ecology and architecture. And – this is where Dan comes in -- it turns out Hearst has deployed a Unified Wireless LAN throughout the entire 856,000 square feet of the Tower, to help it meet both its mobility needs as well as support its green strategy. http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=104257&WT.svl=news2_1

Rising out of the stone Art Deco shell of the earlier Hearst building, the 46 floor tower

- Used 20% less steel to construct
- Reycled 90% of the materials of the original building
- Is furnished with bio-sustainable materials for the furniture and carpeting
- Uses sensors (vs. light switches) to turn off the power in rooms when no one is in them
- Uses RF shielding to keep the building cool (and, interesting, lowers the amount of RF signal bleed out of the building)
- Collects rainwater from the room which is collected in a 16,000 gallon tank to provide a magnificent waterfall in the atrium and cooling for the lower floors. For more on the Tower: http://hearst.com/tower/

Hearst deployed 260 Lightweight Access Points and 4 WLAN Controllers to provide pervasive mobility services to the more than 2000 employees and thousands of annual visitors working in the Tower. The WLAN connections are delivered through Mobile Access’s Distributed Antenna System (DAS), which also delivers cellular connectivity across the building from base stations from Cingular, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

So can wireless be a green technology?

Seven environmental drivers stand out how:

- Seamlessly roaming around the building (including the magnificent atrium), increases productivity and more fully utilizes the available space
- Providing guest networking features allows other users to access the network and avoid traveling back to their offices or to a hotspot
- The DAS system reduces cabling:
o Requiring less metal to be used
o Fewer cables to be pulled and powered (e.g., POE).
o Efficiently deliver multiple wireless signals to users while preserving the key features of the Unified system
- Reducing costs and energy expended in moves/adds/changes as people change workspace
- Supporting location-based services such as asset-tracking can save time and energy.
- Enabling real-time access to Web 2.0 types of info and systems can reduce both increase worker productivity and eliminate to print documents or carry CDs or DVDs for accessing relevant work media.. [Warning: Relevant Diversion Alert] The 400 CDs worth of music on my IPod, if they are all delivered digitally, eliminate the need to burn CDs, wrap them in plastic cases that will sit in garbage heaps for thousands of years.
- Supporting, over time, additional environmental sensors

Imagine using the technology we build to reduce strain on precious earth? Wow, my benchmark lesson came from a company in the printing and media business?

Today our CEO John Chambers, speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, announced a signficant Carbon Reduction Initiative, as ever, showing Cisco's focus on using our own technology to run our business more efficiently. Now we are using our technology to reduce carbon emissions. For more on this effort: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2006/ts_092106.html?CMP=ILC-001

For me, it was a green day in New York. Or as Green Day said in their song “Are We the Waiting”:

“Starry nights, city lights coming down over me
Skyscrapers, stargazers in my head.”

You thought I was going to say Rosebud?

Posted by Alan Cohen at 05:54 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

September 12, 2006

Collaboration, Wi-Fi and Sept. 11

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending a reception for all the parties involved in the Silicon Valley Wireless Mesh Network: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/technology/06wireless.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, the winning bidders (including Cisco), the Silicon Valley Partnership, city managers and IT folks, public policy experts and a coterie of other interested parties. While much has been written about this network and mesh networking in general, I will pause on replaying this for the moment as there was another element to the day worth reflecting upon.

September 11 was a moment in our country's history that left a deep emotional and physical gash in the landscape. Yesterday morning, I had a chance to speak with my uncle, Bradley, a retired telecommunications field service engineer who actually managed to get out of the 18th floor of WTC 9 minutes before the building collapsed (he was, on that fateful clear morning, no joking, installing Cisco routers at the Federal Reserve). We talked about his memory of the day and then our conversation then drifted to a discussion of what I was working on, and that led to our discussion of the Silicon Valley Wireless Network.

We talked in the easy way we have about what occured in Palo Alto on 9/11/06, almost 5 years to the hour when the towers fell down: how a group of men and women from differnet walks of life, from different parts of the economy, representing different groups could come together to launch a project that could serve so many.

What I remember most about 9/11 was how our nation came together in that time of crisis, to support each other and focus on the greater good of the nation, of the wounded, the survivors, and the comfort of the grieving families and friends of those who had lost loved ones. 9/11 is poignant and always current to me. I grew up in New York and watched the World Trade Center towers go up: it was the engineering feat of my childhood. My college roomate's father was the architect for the Port Authority who designed the restaurant that became the Windows on the World.

I hope our project in Silicon Valley becomes a digital Windows on the World: a bright shining, engineering feat. But more: a model for the entire world on what we an accomplish working together. For Silicon Valley is a lot like New York: we are a community that is blessed with a remarkable model of integrating people, ideas and ambition. The sheer number of immigrants to this tech mecca (myself included) are fortunate to become instant residents. Just as the Internet flattens the barriers of time and space for all kind of communications and information, so I hope the Silicon Valley Mesh Network flattens all kinds of cultural, economic and technical barriers that can benefit from being connected to the Internet anytime, anywhere.

The Silicon Valley Mesh Network, when completed, will be a great symbol of an entire community that came together to do something. How American. Or, to paraphrase the American writer, Thomas Wolfe (I am partial to Look Homeward, Angel), perhaps our large, beautiful, pervasive network can become "How New York." As Wolfe wrote: "One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” He could have been writing about any day in Palo Alto.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:55 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

August 30, 2006

Podcasting Mobility

Glenn Fleishman, editor of the http://wifinetnews.com/, one of the top Blogs in our industry has now taken his Web 2.0 approach a step further with podcasts.

We had a chance to rap recently on Mobility and the future of the enterprise

http://wifinetnews.com/archives/006915.html

Happy listening

Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:49 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

August 27, 2006

Mobility and choice should trump dogmatism

Last week, CNET's News.com site ran my signed editorial that provided a counterpoint to a Nortel executive who had written in earlier to state that only cellular technologies were well positioned to support the mobile Internet. While I am an old cellular warrior and a clear fan of the technology -- look, it's impact on the planet cannot be understatated -- we as technologists must constantly look past our own pariochial positions on what we build toward what problems we trying to solve, both technically and financially. If we do this, I believe Wi-Fi is going to be a compelling play in the public arena for many reasons. Moreover, I see Wi-Fi complementing other wireless technlogies including cellular, WiMax and others, still to come, in the rush to mobilize society

Said simpler: applications, bandwidth, spectrum and equipment costs must be considered in development of public WAN kinds of services.

Here is the piece in its entirety

http://news.com.com/Mobility%20+and+choice+should+trump+dogmatism/2010-1034_3-6107934.html?tag=sas.email

In a recent CNET News.com column, Richard Lowe suggested that Cellular and Wireless LAN are competitive technologies. These two wireless approaches, however, are actually allies in the race to mobilize society.

It is worth dispelling three of the WLAN (wireless local area network) myths--security, mobility and bandwidth--raised in Lowe's article and better understand how both technologies benefit the end user.

Security:
WLANs already support some of the most demanding, business-critical applications in t