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Always Bring Your Wireless Stuff
by mobileman (03/19/2008 - 19:27)
My Wireless Business Trip
Being an executive in the wireless industry, I tend to be an early adapter to new technologies and often rely on the technology a bit too much. My recent trip to the West Coast is a good case in point.
The trip out: (picture is not the guy!)
While I was on the plane to the West Coast, I had the honor to be sitting next to a distinguished public figure. Since I want to honor his privacy, I will not say who he was. We had a brief discussion as we observed that he was reading the Wall Street Journal print edition and I was reading it on the Kindle. I tried to demonstrate the coolness of the Kindle and he was mildly intrigued. For the next 5 hours of flight time, he devoured his WSJ, ripping out many pages, taking copious notes on the torn articles, and filing then in a folder. Try that on a Kindle!Driving around:
I rented a car from National and wanted to try their in-car navigation system and compare it to my GPS-enabled Google Maps and the VZW Navigator application. The Street Pilot from Garmin behaved like a bad "Saturday Night Live" sketch; it took many minutes to find its satellites and thus, its location. It barked out directions in quick succession: "Turn Right, Turn Right, Recalculating, Turn Left, Turn Left" -- the screen would have an arrow pointing to the right and the voice would say, "Turn left." It was both sad and amusing. My passengers and I, not to be deterred (or detoured), switched our LBS direction technology. First, the VZW Navigator was fired up, but for some reason, refused to find our location. We then switched to a GPS-enabled BlackBerry and achieved a similar fate. Perhaps we were in a GPS Bermuda Triangle?
We finally used a plain-vanilla version of Google Maps and easily found our way.
For my first battle with LBS technology: click this link.
At the Continental Presidents Club:
We finished our meetings and settled into the Continental Presidents Club at the airport to wait a couple of hours for our flight. I connected to the free WiFi network that Continental provides and started to work. The problem was that the effective bandwidth I got through their WiFi was clocked in a not-so-impressive 20 KB/sec. 20KB/sec -- that is so last century!Fortunately, I travel with lots of options. I disconnected from the WiFi and inserted an EVDO wireless card and, presto, 250KB/sec.
I now feel vindicated for carrying an extra backpack of all my wireless "stuff."
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Blog Storming!
by mobileman (09/20/2007 - 16:22)
Blog Storming!
During the past couple of years, the blogosphere has been full of mobile-application projections and predictions. I have blogged about many of these in the past months. Location-Based Services (LBS), On-Deck Portals, Off-Deck Services, microblogs, video, games, TV, chaperone services, the Iphone, the Google phone … the list goes on.
My question is, what's next? The trends that we are seeing in Web and mobile make a specific prognostication somewhat risky. But of course, here is my try:
I believe that a mobile device is fundamentally a personal communications device. We have already seen the early trend of the “type and style” of a device making a fashion statement or reflecting your inner self in some deep Madison Avenue ad manner. This was furthered by the ringtone explosion. Consumers wanted others to hear their ringtones because it makes a statement in some psychological way about who they are. This is true even if the ringtone goes off in the middle of a bunch of strangers. It is part of self-definition. On the Web, this trend of self-definition is being carried on by the explosion of blog and networking sites.
Since I believe that the past is a good roadmap to the future – the
next big thing in wireless will center on new ways to self-define and announce yourself to the world. We have gone through the visual (what phone I have) and the audible (what ringtone I have). The connection with self-definition and the Web is inevitable. The next big wave of mobile application will involve the ability to define yourself through your mobile- application environment.
next big thing in wireless will center on new ways to self-define and announce yourself to the world. We have gone through the visual (what phone I have) and the audible (what ringtone I have). The connection with self-definition and the Web is inevitable. The next big wave of mobile application will involve the ability to define yourself through your mobile- application environment. Microblogging from your phone, allowing your friends to track where you are (LBS) on your Web social network, streaming live video and audio from your live experience to your Web persona. In essence, this all equates to consumers becoming real-time publishers of their own reality-TV channel. Call it "Blog Storming." Where am I, What am I doing, What am I seeing, What am I hearing and experiencing.
The new generation of Mobile 2.0 applications will have to be self-awareness and self-reporting. It is still intrusive to stop what you are doing to send that SMS or MMS. You take yourself out of the activity to send a message about. The application must be recording your environment seamlessly.
I probably would have not predicted the popularity of reality television, but if watching people chasing each other around on some deserted island is good TV, then watching millions of people run around in their daily lives would prove irresistible. MTV is as much the reality network as it is a music network!While I would never want to do this myself – the attraction of this type of application and society's voyeuristic side will make Blog Storming the perfect storm.
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LBS Services, The Daughter, The Doll and the Wife!
by mobileman (09/05/2007 - 15:05)
The classic example of why LBS services may not have reached their market potential yet is a story I first told at a CTIA event over 5 years ago. It happened to me about a week before the show and has the perfect metaphor for the state of LBS services. It has been re-told by pundits and even published in trade magazines. Indeed many now tell this story as though it happened to them! So now without further pre-ample is the LBS story of the daughter, the wife and the doll.
We were going “through the woods and over the hill” to grandmother’s house. In this case the woods were 180 miles of New York State Thruway and the hill was the Catskills Mountains. The car was packed for the weekend with me, my wife and three kids. The youngest at the time was about 3 and she was never far from her beloved “dolly”, a ragamuffin doll that is stocked at every Toys-R-Us.
You see, we were now seasoned experienced parents. We learned that favorite dolls have a way of going missing and therefore getting our child to bond with one that was easily replaced seemed like a good idea. We even had bought 4 copies of the original one and stored them in our house, just in case!
Getting a three year old to go to sleep without her comfort doll is not a pretty sight.
About 2 hours into our trip our worst fears were realized! My daughter called out for her dolly. I looked at my wife and she looked at me and both of us said, “I thought you ……”. The family is now in dolly Defcon 4 mode. We stop the car on the side of the highway and do a complete search with no luck.
We continue our journey with a now distraught, crying child. All I have to do (in theory) is find a Toys-R-US and buy a new doll. This is the solution that our doll standardization efforts should have yielded.
Being a wireless guy, I decide that the easiest way to find a Toys-R-US is to use the search function on my WAP deck (at 70 miles an hour!). I was able to find a page on the toy store but it had no location information.
The crying seemed to increase and the leers from the front passenger side got more serious.
My next technological solution was to guess that Toys-R-US probably had a 800 phone number that is 1-800-toysrus. This worked! (you can try it) I felt as though my technological manhood had been restored! I navigated the 78 step voice response system to finally get the prompt that promised to tell me where the nearest toy store was. It then said “ Please enter your zip code…”.
For those of you who have not been on the NY State Thruway recently (or ever), it should be no surprise that that State highway authority seemed to have forgotten to put zip code signs next to each exit.
Okay, I am not deterred, technology will get us out of this problem, I assure my 
increasingly skeptical family. All I have to do is figure out what zip code we are driving through, then call the 800 number again, navigate the 78 step voice system and voila!, I will have the location of the nearest Toys-R-US.
increasingly skeptical family. All I have to do is figure out what zip code we are driving through, then call the 800 number again, navigate the 78 step voice system and voila!, I will have the location of the nearest Toys-R-US.The fact that it was now 8:45pm and most Toys-R-Us stores close at 9:00 pm was just a minor glitch.
The next exit came up and I got off. I told everyone confidently that I will ask the toll taker what his zip code is and we will be in good shape. My daughter wailed even more desperately in a demonstration of lack of confidence.
With all my self- assurance, I paid the toll and started to ask the toll taker the zip code question. I was cut off with a still painful elbow to the ribs. My wife leaned over and had this conversation with the toll taker.
“Do you have a Toys-R-US in this town?”, “You do, great!”, “Can you give me directions?”, “ 1 mile, turn right and you will see it?.”, “Great!, Thanks!”
Humbled, I drove the precise directions to the store and bought the doll and put my internet enabled phone away for the rest of the weekend!
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