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).

Earlier this month, the Luxembourg IPv6 Summit was held, and from the indications that I got from a colleague, only a moderate degree of  progress has been made on a few fronts.  The prevalent consensus was that NAT was never meant to be a long-term solution - it was just a stop-gap measure until the address space would need to be increased.  The issue is that NAT does not handle applications that need end-to-end addressing, and that could be trouble for apps that rely on DHCP (incorporating the host's IP address with app layer data).  

Furthermore, the progress of IPv6 is still slow in some regions versus others.  In Japan, for instance, the government took an active participation in helping boost the uptake of the technology, by mandating the implementation of IPv6 as part of one of its initiatives.  The EU has been actively promoting IPv6 and funding quite a few projects, whereas China and Korea expect good growth.  However, in North America, things are progressing on a much slower basis.

There was one presentation in particular that made a lot of sense to me, in addition to making me wonder how fast IPv4 addresses will run out.  I am talking about a slide deck presented by Patrick Grossetete from Cisco.  Patrick presented the next-gen broadband home vision, and on one slide, he illustrates the plethora of devices (PDAs, wireless laptops, gaming, broadband access point, etc.).  If all of those devices has an IP number, then we should be hitting the IPv4 limitation sooner rather than latter.

For those of you interested in learning more IPv6, here is an excellent resource: The IPv6 Portal.