Add a dongle, get a free notebook
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in USB, Networking, Wireless, Mobile on
The usual round of email press releases dropped into the SandM mailbox this morning. One caught our attention, from the folk at PC World, which signals something we’re pretty sure is going to be one of the big IT trends for 2008.
In a tie up with 3, they’re going to be offering a free cheap laptop (or
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Patently nonsense: smartphones, scanners and open source
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Hardware, Windows Mobile, Server, Security, Microsoft, Mobile, Apple on
The latest patent idiocies could put phone prices up and increase your security bill. And only one of the cases would be fixed by my own theory of patents (if you don’t yourself manufacture the item or use the process protected by a patent, I think you shouldn’t be able to benefit from the patent by extorting money from companies that do go to the effort of actually making something).
That would get rid of the patent trolls who buy up IP and sneak it past the patent office. Take the owners of the ludicrous new smartphone patent, which seems to ignore more prior art than I could shake a phone battery at. Read through http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,321,783&OS=7,321,783&RS=7,321,783 and you’ll find it’s not Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, HTC, Palm, Apple, Symbian, Sony Ericsson, HP or Motorola claiming to have invented the smartphone; it’s one Ki Il Kim of Minerva Industries, Los Angeles.
Minerva is part of a company called Gigatech, which claims to hold patents on “user-operated cell phones for audio/video and sensor event reporting” - and on air bags and seat belts. The company is also claiming patents for memory cards, connecting phones by USB and putting a mobile phone holder and charger on the dashboard of your car.
Minerva/Gigatech claims that CEO John Kim was 2003 Businessman of the Year - although the link that’s supposed to say who gave him the award reloads the same page and Google can’t find any reference to the honour. 2003 was, however,
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Why America makes the iPod look open
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Windows Mobile, Mobile, Apple on
We spotted a blog post the other day claiming that the iPhone set new standards as an open phone platform . Rubbish,
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Road worrying - or how I got connectivity and learned to love Windows Mobile
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Windows Mobile, Networking, Wireless, Mobile, Microsoft on
We’ve been on the road for the last few weeks, doing a round of Stateside conferences and company visits. That’s meant relying on the “free” wifi in motels and conference halls. Consumer hardware really doesn’t cut it when you’re using a couple of Linksys routers to cover a hundred plus rooms - especially when it’s the cheapest motel nearest the CES halls. Every room was probably full of journalists and analysts trying to get online, and the routers just waved their little rubber feet in the air and gave up.
Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem. I’d have dug out a good book and gone cold turkey on my Internet addiction. After all, I didn’t need to read a dozen gadget blogs to tell me what I’d just seen that day. However I had the IT Pro editorial team back in the UK waiting for copy - and lack of connectivity wasn’t what I needed. I could have gone to a Starbucks for some of their wifi, but not many are still open at 1 am, even in Vegas. I could have used a 3G card, but this shiny new HP Compaq 2710P tablet is a Santa Rosa machine, so only has a ExpressCard slot - and my Vodafone 3G card is, yes, a PC Card.
Luckily there was a solution. I had my trusty old HTC TYTN with me, and Vegas is on of the few places in the US with decent 3G connectivity (I’m writing this in the heart of the tech world, in a coffee shop in less than a mile from eBay’s headquarters in Silicon Valley, where 3G is a rare and precious thing). Microsoft has added support for Internet Connection Sharing to Windows Mobile 6 (it’s in 5 too, but well hidden) - which means you can use a Windows Mobile 6 phone as a Bluetooth internet gateway.
Getting it working is pretty easy. You’ll first need to pair the phone with your laptop. The rest is simple. Click the Internet Sharing icon on the phone to start using it as a gateway. You’ll need to choose whether it uses USB or Bluetooth (we’d recommend plugging it in to the mains and using Bluetooth, as that way you won’t flatten the phone’s battery running two radios).
Click connect, and go back to your PC. Right click the taskbar Bluetooth icon (if it’s not there, enable it first). You can then select the option of joining a Bluetooth PAN. This is a Personal Area Network, an IP network running over a bluetooth connection. In the dialogue box that pops up, click to choose the device you’re planning on connecting with.
Hey Presto! You’re online.
It’ll be slower than WiFi, but at least it’s a connection. Of course you don’t need to be in a Vegas motel room to use this - it’ll work in Starbucks (no need to pay T-mobile, unless you’ve got one of the new Web’n'Walk contracts that let you use WiFi as part of your standard mobile contract) or in the park, or on the train, or in even in the back of a taxi.
Rated: 60% (2 votes)
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The state of the Mac World
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Toys & gadgets, Storage, Hardware, Mobile, Apple on
The Mac Air is cute, shiny, lightweight
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A Big Day In The Enterprise IT World
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Enterprise, Server on
It’s a sunny day in Silicon Valley. It’s also been a busy few days in boardrooms in the towns around San Jose. While Apple has been burning the midnight oil at One Infinite Loop while plotting this year’s MacWorld strategy, the lawyers’ Lexus convertibles have been powering up and down 101 with the documents that detailed this morning’s announcements.
Oracle buying BEA wasn’t a surprise, the two companies have been engaged in a takeover struggle for some time, and BEA’s capitulation, if not quite a foregone conclusion, was certainly on the cards. Sun’s purchase of MySQL came out of the blue. It’s actually quite logical though, as Sun has been moving away from its proprietary roots since Jonathan Schwartz took control of the corporate rudder.
Still, there are going to be some worried customers out there. Both Sun and Oracle have a history of buying companies and slowly killing innovative products in favour of their own solutions. MySQL is probably too entrenched to be replaced (though SQLite is getting a lot of usage), and it also fills in a gap in Sun’s product portfolio. BEA’s web services-driven middleware strategy is certainly at risk, as Oracle already has its own application server and web services platform. BEA may have an edge in performance - especially now that its JVM and application server are able to run in a VM without an operating system, something that Oracle has been looking for for a long time.
Consolidation in the enterprise IT world has been going on for some time, and now it’s the application server stack’s turn. This is just the first $10 billion dollars of what looks like it’s going to be an expensive year for the big vendors - so let’s hope the costs don’t get passed on to the rest of us…
–Simon
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CES: Travelling storage
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Storage, Hardware, Mobile on
Every now and then I want to throw my laptop out of the window in sheer frustration. I’ve certainly flung USB sticks across the room from time to time, by accident. I’ve also done a Bill Gates and left my travel mug on the car roof when we drove off (although unlike the spoof video in Gates’ CES keynote speech the mug wasn’t there when we arrived). Most flash drives can survive a certain amount of damage - or at least the flash memory can. A USB stick would probably survive the fall from a car roof but I have a rather fetching 1Gb earring made from a flash stick that was sticking out of Simon’s PC when he turned his chair a little too far and snapped off the USB connector.
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Mommy, why is there a home server in the office?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Hardware, Business, Networking, Server, HP, Microsoft on
Just because it’s the Consumer Electronics Show doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of products that matter for business here in Vegas.
Connecting to multiple monitors wirelessly is as useful at work as it is at home; manufacturers like IOGEAR and Samsung are doing that with DisplayLink’s chips and a future product will put the screen from your mobile phone onto a TV or monitor. A SlingCatcher lets you send video from one TV to another (so you don’t have to pay a second Sky subscription to watch the occasional show on a TV in the bedroom), but you can also use it to see photos, presentations, Web pages - and anything else that’s on your PC screen - on TV, which is handy for an informal meeting. Panasonic’s 150″ screen is sized for a large meeting room rather than
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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CES: video is coming
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Futures, Toys & gadgets, Storage on
Between the queues and the crowds and the firehouse of information, CES quickly turns into a blur. Yesterday things kicked off gently with Logitech announcing new products over a leisurely lunch
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2008 technology resolutions
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Windows Mobile, Storage, Networking, Server on
We try out a lot of technology - so much different technology that sometimes we don’t take the time to sort out the technology we really need ourselves. Instead of resolving to work out more and work less, we decided to work out our own technology in 2008. It’s time for some upgrades, some changes and some less is more.
1.
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