The Proliferation of Connected Devices and the Need for Offloading

Last week, Google launched its own, unlocked 'superphone', the Nexus One. Apart from a possible reference to the movie 'Blade Runner', the name 'Nexus' may also refer to the fact that today's smart or superphones are an amalgam of mobile technology, cloud services and connectivity.

The capabilities of mobile devices are developing at a neck-breaking pace. Ever more smartphones, netbooks and e-readers are equipped with the powerful and energy efficient processors of companies like Intel and ARM. Later this month, Apple is believed to introduce the 'iSlate', a so-called tablet computer . Tablets are apparantly the new form factor for mobile computers as OLPC (One Laptop Per Child), whose activities contributed to the birth of 'netbooks', plan for a tablet version (OLPC 3.0) by 2012. Freescale recently announced a reference design for tablets based on its own technology, while during last week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) both HP and Dell showed off tablet-like devices.

Many of the applications and content that are to be used on these tablets will reside in the 'cloud'. This helps to save on processing power and storage, which in turn benefits weight and battery life. [Spotify, Pandora] Apple's acquisition of LaLa, a music streaming service, may suggest that in the near future Apple users no longer have to sync their music library between numerous computers, iPhones and/or iSlates, but can access their library where ever they are and whatever device they work with or carry with them. Even Hollywood seems to consider streaming the way forward: except for Disney, who has its own technology, all major studios are working together in DECE to come up with a standard for online distribution of movies.

The proliferation of connected mobile devices and their use of cloud and/or streaming services will result in very strong growth in mobile data. Cisco forecasts that global mobile data traffic will increase 66 times between 2008 and 2013, which compares to a CAGR of 131 percent. Such growth is likely to put mobile carriers' networks to the test, as is illustrated by the problems that AT&T is having in New York City and T-Mobile Netherlands in the Amsterdam Arena and Amsterdam Central Station.

It is for this reason that mobile carriers should consider ways to offload mobile data traffic from their core network, for example through auto-roaming onto private and public WiFi networks. This way, the core network is reserved for voice traffic and subscribers who are not within WiFi coverage. Subscribers benefit as they experience faster mobile data connections, while carriers can reduce their investment in additional network capacity (primarily RAN, although backhaul connections may also need to be upgraded).

Offloading provides operator-owned WiFi networks (Netherlands: KPN, T-Mobile) with a new lease on life. Carriers that do not yet have a network of WiFi hotspots should partner with one or more hotspot providers. For example, O2 is partnering with BT Fon, which has over 500.000 hotspots in the UK and 700.000 worldwide. Such a partnership is far cheaper than having to invest in additional RAN and backhaul capacity and given that most operators nowadays rely on flat fee data bundles, no revenue is lost through offloading mobile data traffic.

My Apple Media Center

I recently completed setting up my Apple-based media center. Based on a Mac mini, AppleTV, eyeTV and Airport Express, this set-up lets me record TV shows on my computer and view them on my flatscreen TV, while music from iTunes can be streamed to my stereo, providing me with a much better listening experience than those small PC speakers. Below I'll describe my set-up in some more detail:

• I am using Elgato Systems' EyeTV Hybrid to record TV shows on my computer, which are then automatically converted to an AppleTV-compatible format and added to my iTunes library. By doing so, these shows are automatically synchronized with my AppleTV and thus available for watching whenever I want. Using tvtv's Electronic Program Guide, recordings can be scheduled in advance. Although video recordings can become quite large in size, storage is not an issue as I added a 500GB LaCie miniHUB to the set-up.
  
  
• To be able to view other video content on my 32" Samsung flatscreen TV, I use iSquint. iSquint is a powerful open-souce app that can convert nearly any video format to the MPEG-4 format, which is required by AppleTV. Like eyeTV, iSquint can automatically add converted files to your iTunes library and thus to your AppleTV. Ain't that convenient?
  
  
• Apple's Airport Express lets me retire my CD player. With all my music available in iTunes, I can stream any song, album or playlist directly to my stereo. This set-up has the advantage that now all my music can be scrobbled and uploaded to my last.fm profile. While officially Airport Express only works in combination with iTunes, Rogue Amoeba's AirFoil lets you stream other audio sources via Airport Express as well. Hence, when listening to webradio or other webstreams you're no longer bound to your computer either.

A key element in this whole set-up is my AppleTV. I was probably one of the first people in the Netherlands to own one: I had it pre-ordered and when I picked it up from the Apple Store I was told that they would not be able to offer any support yet as they didn't even have one set-up in the store themselves. Although its practical use is limited as the iTunes Store is not yet selling movies or music videos in Europe, using AppleTV in combination with eyeTV and iSquint makes it well worth its $299 price. BTW, one of the video podcasts I enjoy watching via AppleTV is GeekBrief TV with Cali Lewis.

One thing AppleTV doesn't let me do is to watch webcasts or videostreams directly on my TV. That would be ideal in combination with Joost, the new brainchild of the founders of KaZaa and Skype. Using some of the same peer-to-peer technology as KaZaa and Skype, 'Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.' I actually have the privilege of being a Joost beta-tester and it is my belief that online TV services like Joost may very soon come to compete with traditional TV, especially theme channels which make up the majority of cable operators' premium packages.

Up In The Cloud

Slowly but surely more and more of my digital life is moving up in the cloud. It started with this blog and a Flickr account before I even had my own digital camera. I hardly used my Flickr Pro account, so despite the fact that I nowadays do own a Canon Digital IXUS 40 I will stick with a basic account for the time being... My life is simply not that exciting and photogenic (...). This week, however, a trip to Finnish Lapland is on the agenda, so provided the battery will last in the cold (last week's maximum temperature was -15 degrees Celsius), expect me to post some nice pics upon return.

Next up was me using .Mac to sync calendars, contacts, keychains, mail accounts and mail settings between my MacBook Pro (March 2006 - ??) and Mac mini (January 2007 - ??), back up files and make files accessible away from home using iDisk. Especially iDisk proves to be very useful for me as it gives me access to private files away from home and working on my company laptop.

Then of course there are the sublime Google services like Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail and Notebook. With its 2GB storage capacity per account Gmail can actually be used in much the same way as .Mac's iDisk. A recent addition, Picasa Web Albums, allows you to create online photo albums a la Flickr, but you probably won't be surprised to learn that I haven't used Picasa yet (if you are surprised, something may be wrong with your short term memory! What did I just tell you about my Flickr usage?!).

But while all these web-based services and Web 2.0 sites are great, they are not the ones that triggered me to write this post. That honor goes to MP3tunes and Last.fm. MP3tunes, which was founded by Michael Robertson, of MP3.com and Linspire fame, provides you with a 'locker' wherein you can store all your digital music. Once you have uploaded all or part of your music to your locker, you can play your own music everywhere around the world, provided that you're connected to the cloud and the computer (or other internet-enabled device, i.e. Nokia's n800) you're using has an audio card and speakers. For playback you can either use MP3tunes' Flash player or you can stream them through your favorite mediaplayer. Music that is protected with DRM, for example anything bought in the iTunes store, can only be played by streaming it via the associated mediaplayer (in our example that would be iTunes). Big deal, you might say. But now imagine that you're working late and with all your colleagues gone you wouldn't mind listening to that CD you bought the other day. Simply accessing your locker from your desktop computer will do the trick. Or otherwise think of the many times you're over at a friend's place and you come to talk about this great new artist you recently discovered (yeah right...). Now you can let him hear it for himself straight away. Or when you're on holiday and catching up on your work e-mail in an internet cafe... O.K., I figure you're probably getting it by now.

Actually, when we talk about sharing your musical preferences and discovering new music and artists, that is precisely what Last.fm helps you to do. As you listen to music and use Last.fm, you build up a unique musical profile to share with your friends. Using a technique named 'scrobbling', Last.fm keeps track of all the music you play on your computer and, amongst others, tells you how your musical preferences compare to those of your scrobbling friends. It also finds you some musical neighbours, people whose taste in music appears to be quite similar to your own. That way you may find out about some new artist that you were unfamiliar with but whose music you mostly probably will appreciate as well. So there you have it, a social network where people connect on the basis of their musical preferences. But instead of writing and reading about it, I suggest you tune in to Last.fm and check it out yourself. In case you want to learn more about my taste in music, know that I go by the name of 'musicomnivore' (that's a bit of a give-away, isn't it?).

Final thought: that internet connection seems to turn into somewhat of an umbilical cord that connects me to my digital life...

Autumn cleaning

Although I don't want to use this blog as a personal diary, I found I had to share this particular event with the outside world nonetheless. As mentioned in my personal profile, I am quite a bit of a business magazine addict. Ever since graduation from London Business School in July 1998, I subscribe to both BusinessWeek and The Economist. "So what", you might say, "big deal!". It is not so much, however, that I subscribe to these magazines, but that I held on to every single issue since August 1998!! In these thousands of pages, you could read all about the internet hype, the Millenium, the bursting of the internet bubble, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, Enron, the bombings in London, the rise of India and China and much, much more.

But now I have decided to throw them out. But before I did so, I took a few photos, which you find below. How's that for autumn cleaning?!

Synkronized

Yes, I know the title of this post is misspelled and should read 'Synchronized' instead, but being the creative person I am (...) I just had to include this subtle reference to Jamiroquai's 1999 album by the same name. This post is not about music, however. In my previous post I mentioned that Parallels Desktop for Mac allows me to run alternative operating systems like suse 10.1 and Windows XP in parallel with Mac OSX, without having to reboot. Furthermore, Parallels Tools enable folder and file sharing between Mac OSX and Windows XP. Something Parallels doesn't support is the sharing of bookmarks, cookies, saved passwords and browse history among browsers in different virtual machines. For a true Transparent OS to materialize, however, such synchronization would be required. Enter Google Browser Sync.

This extension for the Firefox browser allows you to synchronize your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers (or virtual machines, for that matter). It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Instead of having to export and import bookmarks from one computer to another yourself and maintaining synchronization manually, this extension does all this for you, automatically. But the real benefits come from sharing cookies and passwords and having a single browse history across computers or virtual machines. It is easy to continue a session that you started on another computer, while looking up the URL of that site you visited yesterday while working from your desktop is now possible as well.

Although Google will most likely have developed this extension with sharing across physical computers in mind, its use across multiple virtual machines is illustrative of the kind of synchronization mechanisms needed to turn the Transparent OS into a reality.

Transparent OS

In my previous post, I wrote about the network becoming the computer and the reduced relevance of a computer's OS as more and more applications move online, thus enabled by AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). But although these developments indeed make it less relevant which OS you are running on your computer, it is a given that every computer still needs one. Did I just say 'one'? If current developments around virtualization are any indication, many of us will soon not have just one but multiple OSs running alongside each other, enabling us to work with our favorite applications without having to worry whether or not our system operates under the right OS, i.e. Windows XP, Mac OSX or Linux. This end-state, whereby it is transparent to the user which OS underlies a particular application, I have come to call the 'transparent OS'. Although the industry still has a long road to travel before this state is reached, several developments point in this direction.



As the proud owner of a MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo processor, I recently installed Parallels Desktop for Mac (RC2). This virtualization software allows me to run Windows XP and Suse Linux 10.1 alongside Mac OSX, without the need to reboot as is required by Apple's own BootCamp. Furthermore, Parallels Tools enables, amongst other things, clipboard synchronization and shared folders between host and guest OSs. This makes that I can use each OS for tasks that it is best suited for; Suse Linux 10.1 for the geeky stuff, Windows XP for the mainstream stuff and Mac OSX for the 'insanely great' stuff! In all honesty, I first and foremost work under Mac OSX but especially in situations where no support for Mac OSX is available (yet), the power (and potential) of the virtualization concept in a consumer context comes to the fore. In the post 'DRM = DRaMa', I mentioned the fact that my ISP provides IP television services, which work with Windows Media Player only. This meant that whenever I wanted use this service, I had to boot up my Dell laptop from work, even if I was working on another, non-Windows computer at the same time. Now, I can work on whatever I need to do on my MacBook Pro, watching some IP TV via Windows Media Player under Windows XP in a separate window on my Mac OSX desktop at the same time. That's progress, don't you think? ;-)

Maybe this example has not yet really convinced you of the validity of my claim that the 'transparent OS' is upon us. In that case, listen to this. It is rumored that Apple may actually incorporate the Windows API in the next version of its own operating system, Mac OSX 10.5. This would mean that users, who are hesitant to upgrade to Vista (Microsoft's own new OS, now due out in 2007) but are looking for a stable and virus-free OS, can buy themselves an Apple computer while still being able to run all their (expensive) Windows XP applications. As said, all this is based on rumors, but if it turns out to be true it sure brings the 'transparent OS' a step closer! So, watch this space!

The Network Is The Computer, Finally

For years, Sun has been proclaiming that "the network is the computer". With the Sun Grid (www.network.com) becoming available in the U.S., this message is no longer pretentious or overblown. Every American with a big computing job and a Paypal account can now buying an hour of computing power for just $1.00. For the time being (?), Sun has to restrict access to U.S. citizens only, as the FBI (or NSA) fear that when such computing power is made available to the wrong people (read: spammers, terrorists,...) it could be turned into a weapon of some sort...

With this first commercial grid becoming available, I believe we get a peek of what the future will look like. Instead of having to invest in powerful hardware themselves, both scientists and start-ups can rely on grids. With massive computing power being available to all at low costs, more and more companies will get involved in data mining, searching for patterns in click streams, purchase behaviors, etc. In his article 'Competing on Analytics' in the January 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport already showed how a new breed of competitor like Amazon, Harrah's and Capital One is dominating rivals by amassing and analyzing mountains of data. BusinessWeek, in turn, ran a feature on the increased applicatbility of mathematics, including statistics, in business. One of the world's largest consumer goods companies, Unilever, actually started to experiment with grids a couple of years ago, recognizing their potential value early on.

But apart from computing power, more and more applications are being transferred to the network. AJAX, which stands for 'Asynchronous Javascript and XML', enables a new type of web applications, which already begin to compete with client-based applications like Word and Outlook. So, it will not just be ASP-like offerings like salesforce.com that replace client-side applications, but also innovative services like AJAXwrite, AJAXsketch and Zimbra, which challenge traditional desktop apps like Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.

Hence, with broadband, both wired and wireless, becoming near-ubiquitious, the network may indeed become the computer. At the same time, Scott McNealy is to be considered a true visionary, foreseeing this trend as long as 10 years ago!