Technology

I am having a busy 10 days coming, with several talks at different venues. Hope to see you at some of them. They are:

Steve Ballmer said that the economy will 'reset'. Although he has some valid points, the choice of words seems very Microsoft.

The "reset" terminology reminded me of an incident years back when my older kids were in much younger: Microsoft and the dumbing down of generations.

Sometimes, things happen or you hear them, and an bulb lights up! Something is revealed to you.

Years ago, I experienced such a moment, from a 10 or 11 year old: my daughter Suhaila.

For some reason the stove that was only a year old, displayed a blinking "8:88" in the timer, and did not respond to buttons pressed.

After trying for a while, I told my wife jokingly: "Well, I guess we will pull the plug. I wish we had Ctrl-Alt-Del on it". To my utter surprise, Suhaila, my oldest daughter said: "Yeah, Ctrl-Alt-Del is very good. It is so useful! It solves all problems you have!"

US President-Elect Barack Obama was on an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC yesterday.

Among the things that was discussed, was his intention on keeping the Blackberry he currently uses.

What struck me was this quote:

"One of the things that I'm going to have to work through is how to break through the isolation -- the bubble that exists around the president.

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, the largest cell phone provider in the world, is urging handset makers to cut down the number of operating systems they use.

He wants the 30 to 40 to go down to 3-5. Fewer operating systems would ease the job of developers, who would
only have to design software to work in several different iterations.

He praised Apple for raising the bar for the user interface.

Canadians pay one of the highest mobile phone rates in the developed world. This is due to an oligopoly by the triad (Bell, Telus, and Rogers). The OECD says that Canada is 29th out of 30 countries when it comes to cost.

The government has realized this and is now opening the market to competition.

40% of the spectrum will be reserved for new entrants, who would have the right to rent towers from the incumbents at reasonable costs.

Finally, Google announced its mobile strategy.

It is centered around the Open Handset Alliance (OHC), which has members such as HTC, LG, Motorola, Samsung, T-Mobile and Sprint. Google's offering is Android, which is a mobile phone software stack licensed under an Open Source licesen (Apache V2).

Rumors are mounting that Google will unveil its gPhone strategy tomorrow.

The buzz says that Google will announce an open source based platform supported via an alliance of most phone manufacturers.

Here are some articles on the topic.

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and VISA will trial the use mobile phones as wallets in 2008. The trials will be done in Ontario, and will be limited to amounts of $25.

This is finally catching up to what some countries in Scandinavia have.

Via CBC.

Two wireless providers in Canada started offering laptop access via PC cards.

Bell Canada has introduced laptop cards that provide internet connectivity anywhere in coverage areas. The ads tout the fact that they can be used in a cab or on a train.

These cards use the mobile phone frequencies and data infrastructure (EVDO).

The monthly unlimited plan is $75 which is reasonable.