This WiMAX thing... and the quest for broad(er) band

Unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere, you're probably sick of hearing about WiMAX for these past 2 years. Indeed, the initial euphoria seemed to have died sometime mid-last year.

Yet, shouldn't we get excited again as we stand on the cusp of a WiMAX launch very, very soon?

Well, I was at a briefing recently by one of the WiMAX licensees (I've been asked not to reveal the company name, but it should be Pretty Obvious since they get coverage in the media almost every week) and hearing the WiMAX plans does make me excited to a certain extent.

Mainly because, if everything goes according to plan, we'll have a viable alternative to TMNet's Streamyx. If not, we'll get this.

Here's a run-down of facts I heard and saw (on the presentation):

1. The WiMAX provider will not compete in the mobile space (as in mobile internet like 3G) but be based off a box and targeted at home connections - a la Streamyx.
2. Speeds and packages will vary from 400 kbps to 2 Mbps. These are theoretical maximum speeds and actual usage experience may vary, but the company says it will do better than Streamyx in making sure you actually get performance that's very close to the package you bought.
3. There will be a one time installation charge (or not, if you don't need technical help to setup the box) and monthly subscription with a contract minimum of two years. No details on pricing were revealed except that it's "very competitive" to what's on the market. My guess is anywhere from RM 68 to RM 120.
4. There will be a return policy (i.e. "guarantee"). If you don't like it, you'll get to return the box within 45 14 days and cancel the subscription. You lose an RM50 processing fee because of the now "used" status of your box. Refunds should be disbursed within 45 days. Here's hoping this policy doesn't land the provider into trouble like Izzi.
5. There will be a "Fair Usage" policy - (i.e. manipulation of bandwidth) - to ensure everyone gets a fair amount of usage and an equal usage experience. This kind of throttling has never been admitted by Streamyx although many people have suspected its happening. This provider gave a very specific account of the policy. Packet shaping won't happen until a user has exceeded 30GB worth of traffic, so I guess it's pretty reasonable. However, the other issue altogether is the fact that many companies (yes, including Streamyx) advertise "unlimited" access whereas in the US, throttling is actually seen as "limiting" access. So, whether it's credible for any ISP (Internet Service Provider) to say they offer "unlimited" access really depends on what you consider "unlimited". For more info on this issue, read this.
6. Will signals deteriorate if it rains? The answer was "well, it should have some effect, but testing shows that bandwidth did not go down. Not by much."

So, will WiMAX be your life-saver? Well, I'm actually for it as any alternative to Streamyx is a good thing. Yet, with WiMAX services now only being rolled out, and with the strategy being to make it a home based service, I have my doubts as to whether any wireless-based technology will be adequate in the near future for home broadband access.

What I'm saying is that already around the corner is Fibre To The Home service which will net us at least 10 Mbps in speed (yes, now we know what those Japanese people are enjoying). On the very high end, you'll get 100 Mbps even. In fact, this should be the news story as the government is investing heavily into ensuring we get fibre-optic services by 2010. Don't forget LTE (the next step from 3G / UMTS) for the mobile too.

On this backdrop, it does seem that WiMAX will have to make the most of this two year lead over FTTH to consolidate its position in the home market. More importantly, plans should already be afoot to move WiMAX out of the home market space, to the mobile market as I would think once Fibre comes in, it would be basically no-contest for WiMAX.

But the question ultimately boils down to this - "should I get WiMAX?" The answer is: depends on where you live and if the signal's good enough. Also, how angry has Streamyx made you?

The Bottle Neck

There was a famous old saying in the tech industry: "Design the software, the hardware will catch up." Hardware used to be the bottle-neck for computing. Processor speeds weren't fast enough, RAM wasn't enough, powerful computing was the size of a classroom.


Today, IMHO, there's a new bottle-neck: internet speeds. Think of the wonders we could achieve. We dream of so many applications - live-streaming video, hi-definition movies, instant download services etc. etc.

Dreams. But the reality is we're stuck waiting 45 minutes to download a 60 MB patch. I'm just waiting for another solution to come along so I can ditch Streamyx already. (And I heard, an alternative might soon be on the way.) :/

And so it begins...

Seriously, I love killing demons.

And it looks like there's more to kill now. You guessed it, Diablo III was announced over the weekend after lots and lots of speculation. The website is here, and the nifty cinematic intro and 2 gameplay videos are embedded below.

At first look, I'm excited by the 3D environment (finally), and the fact that the gameplay looks virtually unchanged from Diablo II. Yes, that's right. I actually think Diablo II got the fundamentals of the game right with some very good levelling and skills mechanics so much so we saw pretty much the same thing in World of Warcraft. So yeah, keep that - add new classes, monsters, items, etc. - and give us a whole new game to fight evil in.

The downside is, with no official dates announced, some people are already saying it won't be out for another 3 years. Oh well...

Digital shift makes radio like never before

The music industry just isn't what it used to be decades ago. In your dad's time, an artiste asking a radio station to pay royalties was unheard of and would promptly result in the artiste disappearing from radio waves and seeing CD sales tank.

Today, CD sales are tanking anyway. And the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) wants radio stations to pay up. Simple logic really. It used to be that both the recording industry and radio stations had a symbiotic relationship. Radio stations get to play songs for free and make money off selling ads. The recording industry got free publicity from radio stations and sold CDs to make money.



In about 40 years, this has changed. Today, CDs are not the only way people buy music and radio is no longer the only way for people to hear about a great act. The internet means word-of-mouth is much more effective and distribution doesn't have to be physical.

So, along comes the RIAA with the idea that since it no longer relies on radio to make CD sales, and since, this essentially means the radio stations are making money for free off their content, they should get a cut of the advertising revenue. Genius!

This has stoked quite a lot of debate, and while its a sad situation for radio, I do think that industries do need to adapt to the realities ANY social shift incur upon them. In this case, the internet, the proliferation of personal media players and the digitisation of music have put the radio stations in a spot. But if the old business model breaks, then the new business models must come on.

My suggestion would be that radio stations start thinking about how to disassociate proprietary content from music. Funny hosts, witty scripts and the opportunity to interact is what makes most of the charm of radio. With music now being such a personal thing, and iTunes helping people sample and enjoy songs much more than ever, radio stations need to think of making relevant content.

What about a couple of talk show podcasts? Quality content people can listen to anytime, anywhere. Or branching out to video?

We're certainly seeing that now in Malaysia with the effort Media Prima puts behind developing gua.com.my but there's definitely a long road to tread. Still, with the ruckus the RIAA is creating in the US, it'd be wise for radio broadcasting industries in other countries to start preparing for the inevitable - when a media consumption format starts to go the way of the dodo.

About PR people dealing with bloggers

Sometime ago, Text 100 (that's the name of the agency I work for...there, it's out) conducted a survey in Asia Pacific amongst bloggers. Today, the survey results are out and if you're interested in reading the results, click on here.

I'm going to cop out, be a bit lazy, and post the below points taken from the Text 100 Social Media Release (click to see videos, pictures etc.) that's going out along with the survey:

• In what is believed to be the first survey of its kind conducted in Asia Pacific, this survey highlights the similarities and differences between bloggers across APAC and their preferences for working with corporations and PR agencies.

• In a positive sign for the communications industry, 84% of respondents welcome contact from public relations practitioners and the corporations they represent.

• Electronic communication is king for APAC bloggers: 58% preferred email, followed by online comments on their blogs, as the preferred means of contacting them.

• Similarly, emailing of press releases and interviews or discussions ranked in the top two as the preferred formats for receiving content (67% and 60% respectively).

• APAC bloggers are not particular about who they engage with, but prefer to talk with active bloggers and whoever is closest to the story – not necessarily the traditional spokespeople.

• Two thirds (67%) of respondents spend less than 8 hours of their working week on blogging.

• Bloggers concerns included receiving unsolicited spam from PR agencies, and were frequently critical of the content they received, feeling it was inappropriate and unusable.

• While most bloggers ignore traditional press releases, 88% were aware of so-called Social Media Releases and indicated they were in favour of using elements such as videos, quotes, pictures and links from these releases in their posts.

• Text 100 surveyed bloggers it knew and those referred by friendly bloggers, not wanting to spam people it didn’t have a relationship with. Text 100 feels the views of the survey’s sample pool are a fair reflection of influential news, technology and bloggers across Asia Pacific.

My personal two cents on the survey and its findings goes like this:

• The survey is not conclusive and it doesn't claim to be. But it provides a useful and interesting perspective on communicating with the blogosphere. Personal experience tells me that personal experience is still king. Different bloggers vary vastly in how they'd like to have you communicate with them - if you're a PR person like me, its your job to figure what's the best way.
  
• There are a lot of the opinions in the survey shared verbatim - they could be from one, two or ten bloggers. You cannot generalise these opinions, but you should make note of them as there will be bloggers you meet who may share or disagree with these opinions. Again, I personally think the fact that the blogosphere is vast, varied and plural means that there's definitely going to be difference of opinion, and often, a very sharp difference.
  
• What Shaolintiger said is useful. Above all, bloggers are human beings and the best way to treat a blogger (like myself and yourself) is to ensure you do so with a good dose of respect.
  

Finally, Windows XP on my Eee

The fruits of a long, 8-hour install process. More later. Need to work now, lunch break over.

Going back to Windows XP

After a month of living with Linux on my yet un-named Eee PC, I've decided to switch back to Windows XP and give it a go.



There's really only one reason for this and its that some applications on Ubuntu - particularly the Evolution email client - don't work well with the customised 1024 X 600 screen resolution on the Eee 900.

I'm hoping to see if Outlook or Thunderbird work any better on XP.

One thing that I did like about Linux was the fast boot times and faster shut down times. However, I've discovered nlite and a guide on how to install Windows XP without all the fat. The guy even claims a boot up time of just 17 seconds on his Eee PC. That, I'd like to see!

More reporting when I've done this - hopefully this weekend.

Unique cyberspace identities - an impending conundrum?

For some reason today I went and activated my myspace account again, and tried to claim my own unique myspace URL.

Barely, crossing my mind, I typed in: "http://www.myspace.com/davidlian" I tense up for a moment in anticipation... and am greeted with the reply - "URL taken."



What? Now, I'm not necessarily a narcissist but I guess I've come to take for granted that the cyber-moniker davidlian would be uncommon enough to be automatically mine. It's not like it's as common as John Doe, right? (anyone actually called John Doe out there?) But fact as it is, there are many other Davids out there, and Lians, and apparently David Lians too!

Here's the conundrum. As more and more social networks, internet services and things-to-sign-up-for pop up, do you find yourself more and more often using the same username / login? Do you start hearing people call you by your "callsign" / online-username / identity / cyber-moniker? (ST or FA anyone?) Have you come to identify with that one name?

If it's yes, yes, and yes, then you're just one more person that's part of the unifying-internet-identity trend. With open-source projects like OpenID, corporate driven unification programmes like Microsoft Passport or the YahooID, and alliances like Google's OpenSocial being drawn up, it seems everyone is driven to having just one ID and one password.

Here comes the cruncher, what happens when you aren't the first davidlian to sign up for that brand new OpenID account? Or that new OpenSocial account? Yeah, you'd end up adding numbers to the back of your username (like davidlian82 for my MySpace) - but you've lost the pristine-ness to your online name.

Will this lead to people then signing up for just about every service there is "just in case"? I just might - heck, the davidlian in OpenID is mine already. Will there be cases of ID-squatting just like cybersquatting?

Will this then lead to stricter policing of "dead" IDs? davidlian on MySpace hasn't logged in since October 2007. I haven't logged into my Friendster for ages. Should unused accounts that age for more than 3 years, be de-registered so that other people who may use the same ID can have a shot at having their preferred one?

On another note: does anyone realise myspace always tells you the person whose page you're visiting is in your extended network?

Update: Firefox 3.0 Final downloadable now (4 hours ahead of schedule?)

Update!!! 9:03 PM KUL Time

Thanks to Jayce Ooi for this. Apparently it's confirmed that you can actually download FireFox 3.0 right now. All you have to do is a simple switching of the URL to download the current Firefox 2.0 from http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-2.0.0.14&os=win&lang=en-US to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US.

If you don't wanna know the technicalities, just click here.

Here's a screenshot, looks pretty much like RC2 / 3, except, for some reason, it appears cleaner to me:

FireFox 3 Download Day today (err.. 10 am PDT, 17 June)

Hello everybody, in case you haven't already heard, FireFox 3 is right around the corner (about 15.5 hours away). For Malaysians, this will be 1:00 AM Wednesday.

In case you haven't heard also, there's a community marketing online campaign going around encouraging people to download FireFox 3 en masse today (17 June 08) in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for most downloads in 24 hours.

Personally, I'm wondering how the FireFox community is planning to keep its servers up because at current count, 1,422,008 people have already pledged to download FireFox 3 within the first 24 hours its available. And I'll be one in queue.

Geo-tagging and route-mapping in the Gold Coast

Before I left Malaysia I said I wanted to try out route-mapping in the Gold Coast with the help of the beta Sportstracker application. What I wanted to do was walk around the city, take some pictures, and have it recorded on a map so I could easily share some of that experience with you.

Click on the below picture to see the results:



Couple of notes I'd like to make here:
1. I turned on the GPS to get the initial lock and then for the most part of the rest of the trip, my N95 sat in my pocket. The magic is that with the initial lock, the application then uses the accelerometer to determine the direction and number of steps you took to 'map' the route. I did take it out two or three times again to get a re-lock, but as you can see from the route, the accelerometer was quite accurate.

2. I snapped pictures along the way and I think it's quite descriptive of what we did. Basically, this route was mapped when we to take a walk around to do some grocery shopping. Along the way, we passed some awesome sites and snapped a few pictures. There's another route that we took that I mapped with some pretty good pics as well. All the pictures snapped are compiled as media and geo-tagged to location by the Sportstracker application.

Overall, I had some fun doing this and it worked beautifully even without a Wi-Fi connection. Of course, the GPS took a little while to get the initial lock (about 4 minutes for me) without the help of A-GPS, but after that, the re-locks happened real quick. CNet's already predicted earlier this year that GPS-enabled cameras will be the next big thing and from my personal experience, they can't be far from wrong. What will rule, at the end of the day, is ease-of-use and the simplicity in getting the mass consumer to understand this new experience.

Okay, that's it for this update, I'm thinking of budget-travellers guide to Gold Coast as a future post but we'll see how that goes.

*For the sake of disclosure: I do work for Nokia as a consultant. However, the above opinions are purely my own, coming from the corner of my geek personality but probably influenced by my deep(er) knowledge of the technologies Nokia works on. Which often make me exclaim (cool!) anyway.

Operating System evolution: next up, Windows 7?

Recently, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer used the D conference to preview Windows 7 (the next OS after Vista). Have a look:



I feel like I'm a little bit more qualified to talk about operating systems now that I have an Eee that runs Ubuntu. After living thru six iterations of Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP and now Vista), Ubuntu was pretty much a schooling in terms of the philosophy of operating systems.

The thing I love about Ubuntu is that almost everything outside the core kernel (the central bit of code runs the system), everything else is a component. You can choose between GNOME, KDE or XFCE depending on what you like to see on your desktop. You can add a "dock" a la Mac OS, or a sidebar a la Windows Vista. You can choose to have multiple virtual desktops, or not. You can customise your OS to be as lean or as bloated as your want it.

And this is only in terms of the interface.

On the flipside, the problem with Vista was probably that it was designed in a time where the emphasis was on pretty graphics, and cool, clickable "things" on your desktop. 98, ME and XP before it was about integrating functionality (like tying Internet Explorer to your operating system) and making everything one bloated piece of work. The worst thing is, since everything is so integrated, you could turn off some stuff, but you could never really make it run as lean as a Linux machine.

So imagine how interesting it is for me to read that Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer are now claiming that Windows 7 will be lighter, faster, and more componentized.

More componentized you say? Like, I could pick and choose the bits and pieces of OS I'd like to have installed? Is Microsoft finally seeing the errors of it's bloatware ways and going the way of the open source community?

From the video, I'm not so sure. Still, at least it looks like we'll get to choose between a Touch version and a non-touch one. Too bad I'm not a fan of finger-printing my screen.

Commute and compute

Is this you?

Do you whip out your mobile as soon as you get on public transport and start fiddling? What do you actually do?

1. Check SMSes (only to realise you just checked 3 minutes ago and there's nothing new).
2. Flip thru pictures you've already viewed like a hundred times.
3. Press random buttons, having nothing really to do.
4. Play a quick game of Snake only to quit halfway because you're getting down the bus.
5. Check email?

Do you also whip out your mobile when you're queueing for movie tickets? Do you whip out your mobile when you're waiting for your dental appointment? Do you whip out your mobile when waiting for a concert to start? Do you whip out your mobile when having dinner with your -in-laws and there's no interesting conversation going on?

Have you realised you whip out your mobile a lot?

Just musings from WCIT 2008... I kept seeing people whip out the most modern, evolved devices ever. I reckon lightning-fast reactions from hands-to-pocket will be the next evolution for mankind. Behaviour change means feeling for your mobile is going to be secondary.

For me, it's just my humble N95 that gets whipped out most of the time:

Working in a mixed reality?

The lunch address at WCIT 2008 Day 2 was by far better than the rest of the morning.

This really smart chap from Fuji Xerox - Dr. Lawrence A. Rowe from the famed FX Palo Alto Laboratory - spoke about working in the "Mixed Reality World." Now, I know the discussion of Virtual Worlds is old and flogged to death, but one point that Dr. Rowe made gave me pause for some thought. Mixed Realities.

I love Twitter. I've made up with Facebook. I confide to my GMail. And carefully lug around my N95 and (now) Eee PC. And I'm not just me. There's a good number of people who are 'me' too. Some are colleagues whose late night drinking escapades I follow on Facebook. Some are friends, getting married and sharing the experience with Flickr. Then the clients, which pop up in my Inbox the whole day. My world is within my arms reach again; but the virtual isn't everything.

Mixed Realities. That's a great point. It's easy to get carried away with the Web 2.0 "bubble"(?) and think the future's gonna be about brains networked wirelessly. But it isn't and the challenge is always going to be "how do you tie back what's real to what's virtual?" At some point, you have to get real.

I liked an example Dr. Rowe used. In Second Life, there's a virtual Capitol Hill where you can attend lectures being actually made in the real Capitol. Real-time, real-life streaming. And I thought, that sounds really interesting - could we maybe have a Virtual Parliament that streams the real-life parliament?

The thinking is that we then need to examine where the virtual ends in each application. My job makes me really reliant on email, but there's a point when its handed-off to meeting real people and connecting in the real world. It's interesting because simple virtual realities like email means that you "virtually" meet a prospective customer via email before travelling half-way across the globe to seal the deal.

It's formulaic but different for each person. Your quotient for the mixed reality differs based on your work, your culture and who you are.

But further thinking, and advancements in technology could tip this formula. Would it, for example, be possible to hold an entire parliament sitting virtually in Second Life? Or maybe on a smaller scale, a press conference?

Whatever the case, the invasion of technology in our lives must make us think: "what's my reality again?" I can assure you, it's mixed.

Holo-Bill a let down

We were promised a special appearance by Microsoft's Bill Gates at WCIT 2008 via special holographic appearance. Unfortunately, the fine print failed to mention the word 'Live.' Thus, we were treated to a corporate video shot in holo-technology with a canned speech from holo-Bill. Here are some stills only, video was a bit too dark:





Nevertheless, the audience was consoled with a somewhat updated video of Microsoft's Surface technology, which we are no doubt starting to see the point of. It looks like it'll make use of Near Field Communication (NFC) to transfer data and content from Surface to devices. Have a look:

WCIT 2008 - Day 1

Update 3:58 p.m.

Question of the day: at the panel of Wireless Broadband Revolution, someone asks "Do you think Aida's (wireless broadband) technology is the breakthrough technology of the century?"

Moderator: "What? True technology? Of course it's true technology! (Someone corrects him) Oh..."

Back to some actual observations from the sessions at WCIT 2008.

The first session immediately after lunch was a Keynote address on Digital Prosperity by Dr. Robert Atkinson from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The Dr. had some interesting data to share about the how developing countries (like ours) could grow ICT adoption. And the key takeaway was this - don't have tariffs for technology goods. Simple really. The regular reaction from a small, developing country is to set tariffs for various industries so that local players can be protected and the local industry thrives.

But Dr. Atkinson's perspective is amazingly sharp and cutting - technology is a different animal all together. Data points that the Dr. presented showed technology used increased 1.5% for each 1% reduction in price. Having technology, no matter from where, at the lowest price possible, increased the tech literacy of the population. The complementary side-effect was that with a more savvy population, transference of technology also grows and the number of knowledge workers increase.

So, I suppose our government is doing the right thing with 0% tariffs on computer and related products. But I guess the next step is to categorise more consumer electronics - PDAs, mobile phones, audio players, personal media players, screens etc. - as computer goods.

Does using a mobile phone help increase IT literacy? Yes. In the basest way, it at least introduces even the most tech illiterate person to the logic of menus and navigation. As computing moves mainstream, so too must we think of how to make consumer electronics more affordable.

Update 12:20 p.m.

Craig Barrett's talk struck a fine balance between being overt "marketing" and issues-based. The point that really stood out for me was when Craig said [I paraphrase]:

You can't solve everything with technology. In education, if given a choice between giving children a good teacher or a PC, you should always choose the teacher. A good teacher makes all the magic in the classroom.

Craig, you've got a good point there; and maybe one that our Malaysan Education Ministry should take to heart. At present, Malaysia is very interested in introducing ICT to the classroom but there's been quite little done to make sure that teaching quality is improving if aneccdotal evidence from my brothers and my own experience is anything to go by.

More after lunch break.

Update 10:45 a.m.

The PM's speech was pretty much what was expected - MSC, Malaysian Broadband plan etc. What I found interesting was his preamble - you can find the video here - where the PM makes mention that whenever he buys a gadget, he passes on the book (manual) to his son to learn how to use. Fast forward a couple of minutes later and he says Malaysia is committed to increase IT literacy in Malaysia. Ironic?

The next speaker, a Mr. James Poissant from WITSA, had some interesting points to make:

• Global ICT spending to increae but growth to taper off.
• The weak US Dollar will fuel ICT exports to emerging markets
• From US$2.1 trillion in 2001, global ICT spending will grow to US$4.4 trillion in 2011 (7% oompound growth)
• Communications tech dominates ICT spending with over 57% in 2007.

More updates as they happen.

Original Post

So I'm here early, as stipulated. Seated on the upper deck.



First impressions of WCIT? The papers weren't joking when they said this was big. I spotted crowds and crowds of people as I made my way up the Conference Centre. KLCC just wows me again and again, and I truly think we have a world class facility capable of hosting world class events.

However, our traditional Malaysian hospitality turned out to be a bit of a let down. Early as I was, I could not get a single cup of coffee. Makes me grouchy.

Right now, the opening ceremony has started with45 different kids lining up at the microphone on stage taking turns to say "welcome" in 45 different languages. And a song right after. Hmmm...

Okay, more updates later once the PM's given his address and the rest of the opening speeches.

Off to WCIT tomorrow!

Eee PC - checked.