Tim Higgins has posted a lot of details on the Linksys Skype (CIT200)phone at Tom's Networking.  Tim figures that the CIT200 will probably cost less than the Dualphone model (price tag: $140).  He believes the CIT200 will cost around $100, given that it does not support both regular landline and Skype calling.  The set should be available by this year's holiday season (wonder if it will be among the most popular techie Christmas gifts this year).  By the way, CIT stands for Cordless Internet Telephony, which is the name that the kit will sell under.  The kit will come with a base station that plugs into the USB port of a computer running Skype, a handset and a charger/base for the handset.  Tim also believes that the CIT200 is an OEM from Ascalade Technologies, a BC-based design house.  Read it all at Tom's Networking!

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Here's an interesting project from the MIT Media Lab that has been getting quite a lot of recent acclaim (in publications such as Business Week, USA Today, etc.).  It's called the Jerk-o-Meter, and it is being developed by a group of students led by Anmol Madan (shown in the photo - the same one that appeared on the USA Today story).  The Jerk-o-Meter is a real-time application that analyzes speech patterns to determine whether or not a participant in a phone call is really paying attention to the speaker.  It can use speech features for activity and distress to determine whether or not a person is really "being a jerk" on the phone.  The current version runs in Linux on a Zaurus IP softphone (the Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 appears on the same photo showing Anmol).  There are plans to add new features such as empathy.  For more details on the features, please follow this link (and open the PDF file entitled "Voices of Attraction").

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Gizmodo is reporting on more info being leaked about the Motorola Q (expected to make its debut early next year).  So the market for smart devices will get really competitive, with models such as the RIM Blackberry 7100G (already launched earlier this year), the Palm Treo 670, and the Motorola Q, among others.

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Lots of people in the blogsphere are talking about the new Treo 670, which runs on Windows Mobile 5.0, and is rumored to have a lot more extra gizmos (a 1.3 megapixel camera, EV-DO and Bluetooth).  Here are some extra videos from Engadget and commentary from Gizmodo.

Update (Aug.7th) - Engadget has some more pictures of the Treo 670 here.

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The baseball trade deadline came and went and my Blue Jays once again stood pat (hey, that used the be the same line a few years before they won the World Series back-to-back, when Pat Gillick was the GM).  But considering Roy Halladay's injury and that this is the year of really experimenting with some youngsters such as Gustavo Chacín, this has not been a bad year thus far, and the Jays are still in contention for a wild card spot.  Wonder if Om Malik would make a little wager for this weekend's series when the Evil Empire (aka the NY Yankees) visits Toronto...

In the spirit of baseball, here's a tech gizmo from Japan (via engadget) from the Ishikawa-Namiki Komuro Laboratory in Japan. The lab is engaged in studies of parallel processing for sensory information.  The gizmo is called a "high-speed catching system" and can catch fastballs up to 300 km/h.

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Hitachi launched a brand new technology called miragraphy in mid-July (hat tip: J@pan Inc Gadget Watch).  The idea is to combine a half mirror and a diffusion film to directly display digital info such as text, photos, videos, flash animations, TV shows, etc.  Miragraphy also integrates sensors, barcode and RFID readers, cameras, etc.  The mirror can automatically respond when folks are around and even create a personal experience based on the end-user's sensed identities.  I mean the possibilities are endless - imagine combining this with biometrics or with other technologies.  Uses would include the fashion and plastic surgery industries (to allow consumers to play "what if" scenarios) in addition to advertising (in public spaces such as restaurants, hotels, train stations, airports, etc.)

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Looks like the RIM Blackberry might soon get another competitor with the newly announced Motorola Q (originally code-named Franklin). The feature list includes a large color screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, a compact design (thin in the same style of the Motorola RAZR), Bluetooth capabilities and a 1.3 megapixel camera, all running on Microsoft's Window Mobile 5.0 OS.  No price points or carrier deals were announced as of yet, but the Q is expected to start shipping sometime in Q1 2006.  (Ed. note: Mark Evans wrote about the ripple effect that the Q article on Barron's had on the RIM stock earlier this week).

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Gizmodo had an interesting entry about KDDI's AI-MATE (see photo to the left), a prototype which the Japanese operator is calling a "hybrid communicator", blending the functionality from a cell phone and a PDA.  The model will make its debut at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan (which begins on March 25th).

On a separate note, we can add a couple more datapoints to the "Chaku-Uta Full" polyphonic tones download service that I wrote about recently.  KDDI announced earlier this month that the service surpassed the 3 million download mark on March 1st, after surpassing 2 million downloads earlier in February (on Feb. 5th).

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A growing proportion of cellular phone shipments are replacements (last year, almost 60 percent).  So it's no wonder every year, we see new handset models, as vendors try to incorporate new functionality to drive up replacements.  Over this past year, there was added emphasis placed on camera phones, which are great not only for the handset manufacturers themselves, but also for operators because they can hopefully increase data traffic.  So it was no wonder to see the so many models having built-in cameras at 3GSM, including the sleek Motorola SLVR V8 show on the figure (hat tip: Gizmodo).  The model is really compact and features tri-band capabilities (GSM/GPRS/EDGE), 5 Megs of memory, Bluetooth support, color display, push-to-talk, MP3 playback, and an MPEG4 VGA camera.

Camera phones are tracking at about 50% of new handset shipments in Western Europe, and part of the reason for their success is that vendors have been able to keep the costs down (the integrated camera models is about 5% of the total bill of materials for the handset).  One of my own biggest questions from 3GSM was - will users want a cell phone that can take pictures or a camera that can make phone calls?  Honestly, one could almost not tell the two apart.

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Nortel (NYSE:NT) and Research in Motion (Nasdaq:RIMM) signed an agreement under which BlackBerry devices will have added VoIP capabilities via Wi-Fi.  This will require a tight integration between RIM's BlackBerry enterprise platform and Nortel's CSE 5100 multimedia server.  As announced at VoiceCon 2005, the first model to incorporate this feature will be the BlackBerry 7270, albeit it will be a VoIP-only device (to be used not only in enterprises, but also over public WLAN hotsports).  However, the future is really all about seamless roaming, so the market is IMHO ready for a dual mode BlackBerry that could function in 2.5/3G mode or in Wi-Fi/WLAN mode. 

Note: RIM also signed a similar partnership deal with 3Com, which will use its own IP PBX and WLAN switch (licensed from Trapeze).

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While voice and data convergence in the enterprise has been considerably refined in the past three years, very few vendors have put much thought behind convergence of devices. There has been a lot of emphasis put on the so-called softphones, which are CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) applications that can run on PCs and provide end-users with a rich set of functions.

While the softphone has been labeled as the “desktop of the future”, that goal has remained quite elusive as most vendors did not understand that these applications should ideally work with desktop phones and not necessarily replace them (except perhaps for special cases such as traveling salesmen who can load them up on their laptops and take them on the road). Business cases were made for the IP softphones to replace IP hard phones, but nobody figured a way to get more functionality of a desktop phone via a complementary CTI application that worked in conjunction with that desk terminal.

Enterprise telephony equipment vendors have struggled to understand that end-users typically prefer an interface that is not overly complex and with which they are already familiar with rather than something overly complex. A sophisticated IP phone with color displays and web browsing functions sitting right next to a PC is just an expensive toy that will hardly be used for these functions (the PC is just as capable for viewing some web sites). Of course, that same phone in a different setting (such as an airport lounge or a hotel room, where a PC is not readily available) would have an entirely different appeal and value proposition, but why settle for only niche opportunities?

Another forgotten point was human factors. How many vendors out there are selling softphones that have pictures of phones on the screen? How bad is that? Instead of taking advantage of an environment that is as rich as a PC, with nice GUI gizmos such as dialog boxes, dropdown menus, radio buttons, etc., let’s just go back to the same old 12-button desktop phone interface and emulate that on a PC.

This is why it was so refreshing to see innovative products such as Mitel’s Navigator, which was announced today at BCR’s VoiceCon conference in Orlando.  Mitel has brought a new form factor to the world of IP telephony: a phone bar that can deliver powerful functionality via a tightly knit interface to the PC world. This allows Navigator to work in conjunction with applications such as Mitel’s YourAssistant (YA) and environments such as Microsoft’s Live Communications Server. The new ergonomic design saves desktop space, is very intuitive to use and allows users to define their own functions via 9 programmable keys. These buttons can invoke PC applications, telephony functions or commands. Navigator also supports SIP and hands-free calling, but the key differentiator is the rich suite of functions that YA can deliver, including collaboration, instant messaging, presence and video. Users can drag and drop a few contacts on a container and initiate an impromptu conference call on Navigator via just a click of a button. The end result is pretty compelling: a phone with an innovative form factor that is easy to use, yet that can deliver a lot of powerful functions via PC client applications.

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Trying to capitalize on the success of electronic pets, high Christmas sales of Robosapien and the increasing popularity of MP3 players such as Apple's iPod, Sega Toys revealed plans to launch iDog, a new "music entertainment pet".  The electronic pet is able to actually "feel" four emotions: anger, humor, joy and pathos.  These emotions are expressed via seven colored LED lights mounted on the face. 

Built into this gizmo is an MP3 player that can store roughly 70 children themes and is also able to mimic one's voice (via playing sounds that are in a similar wavelength).  The pet is touch-sensitive: touching its noise will trigger a happy mood, while touching the tail will cause the dog to become upset.  The iDog also comes with a built-in microphone and analog audio input, which makes it also a rather different type of karaoke machine.

SegaToys is planning to distribute the iDog in 57 countries across the world, and the launch in the Japanese market is planned for April 2.  The company hopes to sell half a million units in Japan alone, and the iDog will definitely be distributed in the US, so it is expected it will be a hot seller over this side of the Ocean as well.

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About Robotics.  I received feedback on a couple of fronts.  First, Swan Solutions Managing Director Bart Delgado (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Inter-Tel's analyst conference earlier this month) had an interesting insight about the Seiko Epson flying micro robot video link that I included in a TF entry last year.  Bart makes a few interesting observations, including the pendulum-like motion and the blue background.  I went back to the Gizmodo entry on the same topic, and did not see any updates.  Funny how the Gizmodo folks also noticed the "enthusiasm" of the demo girl.  But I will have to see this flying micro robot for myself before making any judgments. 

Bart, being a big heli enthusiast, mentioned the Hirobo XRB Sky Robo Silver Lama (shown to the left), a radio controlled electric indoor heli, as being the closest available robot to this Seiko Epson model.  Bart also gave me a verbal update on UK sales of Robosapien, the robot that I nearly bought while visiting Boston last summer with wife.  According to Bart, this was one of the hottest toys sold during Christmas, for an 80£ price tag.  Indeed, according to this Times Online article, Hamleys (a London toy shop) expected to sell 180,000 models, whereas online gadget shop sold 20,000.

Another TF reader from the Netherlands, who has been actively involved in robotics research, designed quite a provocative scientific calendar.  The calendar is meant as a nice joke, showing robots in some insinuating positions (please see photo to the right) or showing their "private parts".  Of course, the idea of the calendar is to provide information about robotics conferences and events, but with a slightly different, funny twist.  No porn is tolerated here at TF, but the eRobotica 2005 PlayBot Calendar is given a "poetic license" here, since it disseminates robotics conferences info in a quite creative fashion.  So be sure to check out their web site and download your copy of the calendar!   more »

The satellite radio market got a boost this week, as Toyota (the fourth largest automaker in the U.S. behind GM, Ford and Chrysler) announced this past Tuesday that it has selected XM Satellite Radio for factory-installations starting from 2006.  XM (Nasdaq:XMSR) already had an existing relationship with Toyota, in which the Japanese car manufacturer was offering XM as a dealer-installed option.  Another part of the deal is that Toyota also selected XM as its supplier for data services, such as XM’s NavTraffic real-time traffic information service.  The number of models offering XM as a dealer-installed option will increase in 2005, with new models such as the Toyota Avalon and the Lexus GS 330 being added to the already existing 10-model lineup. XM also has partnerships with Honda and GM.

On the same day, SIRIUS (Nasdaq: SIRI) also announced that Toyota has selected SIRIUS as a post-production (dealer installed) option beginning in February 2005 for the 9 models on which Toyota is already offering XM as a dealer-installed option.  It is widely believed that this deal came as a result of Sirus' relationship with Penske, the largest owner of Toyota dealerships in the U.S.  While the Toyota deal was a positive for Sirius, factory-installations still are the holy grail, and typically drive a substantially higher volume of activations, making things more difficult for the company to replace XM.  Moreover, XM is better entrenched due to the NavTraffic (the real-time traffic information service) portion of its deal with Toyota.  The company already offers NavTraffic on the 2005 Acura RL model, with service currently available in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas.

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Another innovation milestone was reached by Korean manufacturer LG Electronics (LGE).  The company announced this week the introduction of the world's first wireless handset able to receive terrestrial DMB (Digital Media Broadcast).  In achieving this goal, LGE won the DMB satellite race, becoming the first cellular phone manufacturer to make handsets that allow consumers to receive satellite broadcasts to watch satellite programs while simultaneously speaking via a mobile phone.   

The Korean-based vendor incorporated the standard home TV antenna functionality into the new mobile handset to receive broadband DMB.  The total investment in this project was about 20 billion won (roughly 18.3 million dollars).  In achieving this feat, LGE's team of 130 researchers was able to solve issues such as power consumption and bulky terminal size.  The DMB receptor chip is currently an OEM, but LGE plans to make its own chip by the end of 2005.

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This past Thursday, Dell (Nasdaq:DELL) unveiled its consumer electronic products, just in time for the holiday shopping season. The lineup includes plasma televisions, new printers and a sleek personal digital music player targeting the same consumer segment as the iPod mini.

Obviously, the recent foray into consumer electronics is definitely indicative of Dell's strategy to continue to leverage its direct-sales model to sell a wider range of products.  But what about the $199 Dell Pocket DJ?  Can it take away some market share from Apple's iPod?  The new Pocket DJ has a nicer design than the older model, weighing 4.4 ounces and having a capacity of about 5 GB (good enough for about 2,500 songs).  Apple owns the digital music player market (using HDs as storage), with about 90 percent of the share.

What are the experts saying?  Om Malik had an interesting insight on his blog post, from Steve Milunovich (the Merrill Lynch strategy czar, whose opinion is definitely one of the most respected in Wall Street):

We believe the Dell's music devices will continue to have limited success.  Dell announced an iPod Mini competitor with the same user interface as the previous Dell Jukebox, which has not done that well.  Dell management said last spring that it intends to be patient in the MP3 market. The 5 GB Pocket DJ will sell for $199 versus Apple's 4 GB iPod Mini at $249.  The larger 20 GB DJ will go for $249 for versus the Apple's 4th generation 20 GB iPod at $299. The two biggest issues Dell customers have are viruses and integration.  Both play to the advantage of Apple.

Here are a couple of more interesting reviews at Gizmodo, my favorite gizmo review site:

• DigitalLife: Dell DJ 20GB and Dell Pocket DJ 5
• Two New Dell Music Players

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NTT DoCoMo and Fujitsu Laboratories have teamed up to develop a prototype micro fuel cell for 3G FOMA phones.  [Ed. note: FOMA is the name of DoCoMo's proprietary 3G network in Japan]  The logic behind the move is to cater to the power demand by heavy-duty 3G cell phone users.  But even normal users will also benefit, given the increasing power consumption of cell phones (which can be also used to play games, store information such as photos, play different music ring tones depending on the caller ID, etc.). 

The greater power capacity is due to the micro fuel cell, which is able to store 10 times as much power per unit weight as a conventional lithium-ion battery.  The fuel cell generates electric power through a chemical reaction by mixing hydrogen and methanol.  CNET reported that Fujitsu was able to increase the methanol concentration in the fuel cell by developing a better membrane.  The prototype unit measures 152mm x 57mm x 16mm and weighs 190g. 

The charging device is shaped like a normal cradle used to recharge handsets, and it meets all the specs of other FOMA mobile phone rechargers besides being compatible with all FOMA handsets as well.  Both companies anticipate that the prototype will be further refined, with development being completed by the end of 2005.  The key question is when the prototype will become commercially available - thus far, the jury is still out on some of these fuel cell initiatives in terms of products actually launched in the marketplace.

Note: TechTree (an interesting Technology Daily from India, which I enjoy reading) also mentions that Fujitsu apparently has another prototype power unit that incorporates the technology.  Perhaps this work can be extended to other devices, such as PDAs and laptops.  A 300 ml. methanol solution can hypothetically charge a notebook for close to 10 hours.

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Here is another story from the Korea file.  Telecoms Korea had a piece on new phones and services to be introduced in Korea.  The latest model to be offered by KTF (a Korean mobile operator) features a mobile caption service which displays lyrics of the song played on MP3 phones in real time.  This is the first time I hear a mobile operator providing such a service.  Given the success that the ringtone download service had in regions such as Europe, I expect other Euro wireless carriers to follow suit.  This particular phone also comes with a 3-megapixel camera and TV receiver.  There are plans to add caption to all the MP3 phones or PDAs released through KTF in the future. 

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Curitel, the South Korean handset maker that made the news in late August when it announced a deal to ship a new camera phone to Verizon Wireless (NYSE:VZ) also grabbed some headlines last week, with the launch of the P1, a slick-looking camera phone with a twist: speech synthesis.  Yes, the phone has text-to-speech as a built-in feature.

Given that the speech engine being used is in shrink-wrap mode, it might not have a large vocabulary.  The speech synthesis is done to output via voice the contents of the text data such as alarms, scheduling and SMS.

The cam-phone, which comes in different color models, is held sideways.  P1 is also equipped with a 2-megapixel digital camera and a 1.9 inch wide TFT LCD screen. (hat tip: Telecoms Korea)

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IBM (NYSE:IBM) announced this past week that it has been working with Honda Motor Company (NYSE:HMC) on a new real-time car navigation system.  The jointly developed system provides hands-free functionality and uses speech recognition and synthesis (TTS or text-to-speech) to be able to identify street and city names that exist across the entire continental United States (this is a big vocabulary system, that contains 1.7 million street and city names and about 700 spoken commands).  Once the intended destination is spoken by the driver, the TTS engine will provide turn-by-turn voice guidance on how to get to that address.  The TTS engine provides a very natural voice (not synthetic or robotic, like most TTS engines from the past).  IBM and Honda were able to leverage hours of speech recordings from previous Honda systems.

Another value-add is nationwide dining information, which enables the drivers to request names and directions to restaurants.  The system is targeted to be standard equipment on the 2005 Acura RL model and also available as an option on the 2005 Acura MDX and 2005 Honda Odyssey in the U.S. and Canada.

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NTT DoCoMo (NYSE:DCM, the largest wireless Japanese operator) and Motorola (NYSE:MOT)announced on Wednesday plans to develop a 3G FOMA handset geared towards business users (note: FOMA is the name of DoCoMo's proprietary 3G network in Japan).  The intent is for the new model to be GSM/GPRS compatible, making it the first FOMA model that may be used outside of Japan.

The new, still to be named handset will be able to access the Internet through mopera or any other available Internet connection, and will be compatible with public WLAN services offered by wireless operators.  That way, users will be able to use high-speed Internet access at fixed, cheaper rates whenever they are close to Wi-Fi hotspots.  The browser will be capable to display standard web pages, in addition to i-mode or WAP pages.  Another built-in feature is the ability to view e-mail attachments in Microsoft Office format

Also on the same day, announced a partnership to offer seamless WLAN roaming around the world via iPass.  Unfortunately, there are no current photos to be shown, as details given by Motorola and NTT were sketchy at best, but some observers believe the product will become commerically available sometime during the spring of 2005. 

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Note: This new model will have 4 connection option available: GSM/GPRS, Wi-Fi, 3G FOMA, and Bluetooth.  I believe that is the record - even more than the handset manufactured by Motorola in the Avaya/Motorola/Proxim joint project that was discussed here in a previous entry.   more »

This posting is yet again another tribute to the robot enthusiasts that have been flocking this blog recently, although I have to confess that I have checked the price of Robosapien and saw a brief demo while taking a few days off in Boston in early August with my wife (note: we were in Downtown Crossing, going over to Filene's when I decided to drop by Macy's nearby).  Must be deja vu from the MIT 2.70 contest...

Japan Today had a neat story on Epson's launch of the world's lightest flying micro robot.  According to Seiko Epson, this is an advanced successor to its original flying micro-robot which was the world's lightest and smallest (136 mm wide, 85 mm tall and a light weight of only 12.3 grams with the battery included).  The new "Micro Flying Robot" follows a flight-route program sent from a computer using Bluetooth wireless technology.

A description of the model reads more like one of those James Bond / 007 gadgets: "On board is a 32-bit microcontroller, a super-thin motor, a digital camera that sends blurry images and a tiny gyro-sensor that weighs less than one-tenth of a gram."

And besides being a great toy, what can be the applications for this Micro Flying Robot?  Actually, the AP story talks about real purposes for this miniature helicopter, including disaster rescue, security and even space exploration. 

Note: the Seiko Epson web page has a press release with a bigger photo available here.  There is also a link with a video of the flying mini robot. 

Update (20/08/2004): The above story was cross-referenced on Gizmodo!  That was really nice - an honor, in fact, given the popularity of the site and how it always carries stories on the latest cutting-edge gadgets.  As it turns out, this version of the mini-heli-robot (how about that for a shortcut?) is an improvement over the previous one, which was introduced last year.  Here is the older model (hat tip: Gizmodo).

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Updated 17/08/2004  There has been so much interest in the ROBO-ONE contest that was mentioned here a week ago, that I decided to post this, courtesy of Gizmodo.  It turns out that the popular site had a couple of entries dedicated to the big Macy's Robosapien exhibit in front of its New York City store.  This is part of the campaign for the much anticipated arrival of WowWee's Robosapien, "the hottest programmable, entertainment robot on the planet".  The robot is expected to be available at Macy's stores across the United States in the "Home Store" section. 

Here is another link to the story, along with a full description of Robosapien:

Designed by WowWee and robotics physicist Mark Tilden, Robosapien is the most advanced and humanlike robot available. At 14 inches high, Robosapien has excellent articulation and has 67 pre-programmed functions, including picking up, throwing, giving a high-five, whistling and dancing - all of which you program with an easy-to-use remote. Robosapien has four advanced programming modes to program a sequence of actions and three pre-programmed demo modes. And, in addition to being highly intelligent and programmable Robosapien is also totally affordable at an approximate retail price of $99.

So to all the robot enthusiasts out there... enjoy!

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Dottocomu has a pretty interesting story today about the ROBO-ONE contest being held in Japan.  The annual event features bipedal robots in a tournament that gets the attention and imagination of many enthusiasts who watch their creations tear each other apart.  The contest has a captive audience that is eager to watch robots with creative names fight each other, inspiring new strategies and designs every year.  One of the notable fans in the 2004 edition of the competition is Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, who autographed one of the robots on display in Tokyo.

Notes:

1- San Francisco held earlier this year (March 20th and 21st 2004) the Robolympics event.  Even on that occasion, Japanese and Korean robo-one models delighted the crowd.  The Korean entry in particular was interesting, as its robo-one had a vision system that enabled it to track and kick a tennis ball.

2- All this robot talk has gotten me to be a bit sentimental... I vividly remember watching the famous MIT 2.70 robot design competition, which has now been renamed the 2.007 Contest (part of the old "Introduction to Design" course, whose number used to be 2.70 in the MIT course catalog, and recently has been re-labelled "Design & Manufacturing I", or course 2.007 for short).

3- I did not have a chance to catch "I, Robot" yet, but Yahoo! users seem to have given it a B+ rating, better than the movie critics (B-).  Any opinions are welcome...

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NTT (NYSE:NTT), the Japanese telecom giant, says it is releasing today the first 3G phone that can also serve as a "mobile wallet" for making purchases and for performing ATM withdrawals and credit card purchases. 

The F900iC model utilizes a smart card to work with its FeliCa mobile wallet service, which empowers subscribers to use the mobile's near-field wireless technology to carry out various transactions.  The phone works with DoCoMo's 3G service, and also requires a subscription to NTT's i-mode service.

Another interesting feature is security: the smart card functions can be locked using either a password or a fingerprint sensor.  It is the first mobile handsetl that I am aware of that uses biometric verification.  The F900iC also comes with a 1.28 megapixel built-in camera and a 2.4 inch high-res color LCD.

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German conglomerate Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) announced yesterday its newest wireless handset, the tri-band SK65, which is expected to become commercially available in November 2004. The phone is expected to target the high-end mobile market, and features a unique QWERTY keyboard that can be revealed by rotating the phone.

Siemens’ goal is to capture some mind share in the business segment by focusing on “must-haves” such as built-in e-mail and corporate data access capabilities, instead of the typical consumer “nice-to-haves” such as built-in MP3 players or cameras. The BlackBerry functionality, licensed from Research in Motion (Nasdaq:RIMM), will enable end-users to pick up their e-mail messages without having to dial in to collect them. While other cell phone manufacturers such as Nokia (NYSE:NOK) have integrated some BlackBerry e-mail functions in the past, the SK65 is the first model to incorporate the full suite of BlackBerry applications, including features such as e-mail, a calendar, and a Web browser. The product is expected to come with a $360 price tag, and will be initially introduced in Europe, followed by emerging markets such as India and Latin America. Other features include its compact design (it weighs only 144 grams) and push-to-talk “walkie-talkie” functionality.

The adoption of the BlackBerry functionality by a giant of Siemens’ magnitude bolsters RIM’s new licensing program for its flagship software application suite. Moreover, the agreement signals that RIM will be willing to license its products to different manufacturers, so we can expect to see the software to be used with various form factors in the future. But, more importantly, another driver that will definitely benefit RIM is the advent of dual mode (802.11 / 2.5G) devices, which was reported in an earlier entry. While the pickup in RIM devices has been impressive, many cost-conscious enterprises are weary of giving away those gadgets to a higher proportion of their workforces, due to the high service costs associated with them. However, with a dual mode type device, employees will be able to use these RIM products while being inside the enterprises at almost no cost (or roaming outside them, when entering WiFi hotspots, at much lower costs than cellular high-speed data services).

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In an earlier thread, I explored the notion of digital ink (Allstream offering, with OEMs from MiCo and Anoto Group).  But the possibility of a future mass application centered on this concept is very intriguing. 

More specifically, I was thinking of using digital ink and a type of digital paper in a format for the mass media, namely newspapers.  Something along the lines of a paper that would be able to update itself on an hourly basis, everytime a subscriber would pass through a public WiFi hotspot that upon successfully verifying the subscription status, would upload the latest updates that would appear on the digital paper.

Could the idea fly?  There are many technology elements that are already in place today to enable such a solution to become a reality.  Certainly the idea itself already exists and was showcased in Tom Cruise's sci-fi futuristic thriller, Minority Report.
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The idea of being able to use a dual mode handset and roam between 802.11 (WLAN) and 2.5G or 3G networks took a giant leap forward when Avaya (NYSE:AV), Proxim (Nasdaq: PROX) and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) announced that their cooperation is beginning to bear fruit.  The three vendors jointly announced on Tuesday that their platform that will allow enterprise users to get ABC (Always Best Connected) wireless service (either via their corporate WLAN or the cellular network). 

The offering is called "Converged Mobility Solution" and it requires an IP PBX from Avaya, access points (APs) from Proxim  and a call manager gateway and the dual mode handsets from Motorola.  These phones (the Motorola  CN620 Dual-Network Mobile Office Device - MOD) support both VoIP connections when in range of a corporate WLAN (or presumably some WiFi hotspot in the future) and a GSM cellular connections whenever an 802.11 network is not detected.

The MOD can switch from the wireless to the 802.11 network when it is available, as well as hand-off calls from the WLAN to the GSM network when the end-user is no longer in range (depending on what the SNR, or signal-to-noise ratio is).  The handset runs on an embedded version of  Windows CE (4.2) and relies on a dual mode 802.11a/g chip from Texas Instruments.  The equipment will initially run only on 802.11a, however.  The gateway allows for push-to-talk whenever the users are in range of a WLAN. 

Of course, a big part of the equation is when Avaya will find and announce a wireless operator partnership, since sales cannot really take off without some participation from that carrier.  What does that mean for wireless SPs?  Will they be able to match a triple play offering from the wireline counterparts?  Perhaps... But this joint offering is a step in that direction.  A wireless SP could form a relationship with these vendors and then offer a bundle that would consist of X minutes worth of calls on their GSM network (or CDMA 2.5G/3G variant) coupled with Y minutes worth of calls on their WiFi networks.  Hence, a user could take his CN620 and use it for free within his enterprise (with Avaya and Proxim WLAN and IP PBX gear), while incurring one rate when on the wireless network and another type of charge when within range of a publicly available WiFi hotspot.

Update (Aug.3/04): Motorola claims to have solved the battery power issue with this product.  The battery consumption for 802.11 phones is much higher than for the traditional wireless handsets, because of the way the 802.11 protocol works (i.e. the access point, or AP, keeps on checking whether or not all the endpoits associated with it want to make voice transmissions; this periodic activity can draw a lot of battery power over a short period of time, making the duration of a fully charged 802.11 set a lot shorter than that of a typical wireless phone).  Motorola is using a work-around with Proxim that is premised upon a "deep sleep" strategy.  More details will follow in an upcoming post.

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MIT's Tech Policy blog reported on an interesting technology being developed in Japan: optical camouflage.  Researchers there are focused on developing the illusion of invisibility - much like in James Bond 007 movies or on Alice (a 1990 movie directed by Woody Allen starring Mia Farrow, William Hurt, Joe Mantegna and Alec Baldwin).   

The system is actually pretty simple, involving a mix of light-sensitive and light-emitting devices attached to an adapted reflective surface.  The devices are connected to a computer, which simply projects on each side whatever is on the opposite side. 

From the above picture, we can see that the result is more translucent than fully transparent, but there is potential for real invisibility, although with a lot more complexity.  In order to achieve full invisibility, the background must be captured from all angles and the camouflage itself needs to display it from all the perspectives simultaneously.  This entails a minimum of six stereoscopic camera pairs, in order to capture the scene from every single viewpoint. 

Source: University of Tokyo   more »

PC World had an interesting article about what the next generation of cell phones will look like.  They will offer far more features that the current cool mobile handsets du jour that only have a built-in camera. 

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Last month, Toshiba set the record for the world's smallest hard disk drive (HDD).  In January, the Japanese vendor introduced its newest HDD model, a 0.85 inch hard drive, which is equivalent to the size of a stamp.   more »