June 11 2007

You’d think this is a British joke. But it ain’t! Some dudes over at EM-SEC Technologies came up with this sick idea - WiFi screening paint! EM-SEC 2060 is a water-based polymer security system. When applied as a surface coating to individual rooms or entire facilities, it provides a shield and creates a secure Electromagnetic Fortress against eavesdropping and airborne electronic theft.
A WiFi exec should now rush to get a team of painters abreast of the networking crew. They should also strikethrough the current services price tags because WiFi has become the safest thing around. No more broken deals because their clients fear some bad bad hackers might pry in their shiny, brand new, wireless nets!

Hmmz, I think it’s a cool idea. But since cell phones, radios etc will all be dead in the wireless bunker, there’s few reasons to think it’ll make it on the ’sales’ shelf at your local supply store. Yet again, I hope it comes in Pink and Mad Lila. :) I feel like redecorating, not!

Or better yet, get a good admin (security guy). I happen to know a few in case you have no clue where to start.

Now here’s some fresh Joost vs Apple news! Yeah, ‘I told you so’ is on my lips. Remember the article ‘Joost should be under FrontRow?‘ we published a little ago?

Well, Joost doesn’t play in FrontRow, but it does in BackRow :)
The hottest WiFi gadget around, the AppleTV, has been hacked to support Joost! Hell yeah!
As a matter of fact I’m starting to be interested to getting one even if I don’t have a HDTV nor do I have a lifestyle wrapped around watching TV!
Was planning to write on WiF:)) about the AppleTV when I learned they hacked it to run Firefox or an Apache server on Apples media hub. But you gotta give’em credit, the Joost thing is just amazing! Go on! Go, check those witted guys over at appletvhacks.net!
Pssst! Btw, they run a $500 bounty for the first team to get the open source PBX system, Asterisk, running on an Apple TV.

Have you seen 300? Well, I finally have. All I can tell you is that… they did not have WiFi in Sparta!

Joost launched a new, redesigned, website. It’s more friendly and user-oriented, a step closer to the general release. Go check it out!

We did not rush to posting this as there’s tight lobby promoting the OLPC so this story is far from over. As a mater of fact Romanian PM Calin Popescu Tariceanu brags about having brought the initiative to the Parliament.
What is peculiar is that the media picked up the news poorly, quoting a total price tag of 700 million Euros. OLPCnews.com rushed to accusing the Romanian politics for killing the deal and raised a question about the legit behind the 700 mil figgure.
The answer is rather simple though. Any country that wants to purchase the OLPC has to order a minimum of one million units. Since Romania is a EU member it deals in Euros, therefore one hundred million US dollars goes translated in roughly 70 million EU currency units (Euros).
The darn playful extra zero made it all look like a political trick. Whereas it only comes down to the basics of being an EU member, and the OLPC is not on that priority list for Romania.

Too bad, we say, because we would have liked to see the funny green wireless lappies around. But the reality is that Romania has plenty of computers in schools. Africa or Asia need those computers more than children in Romania do.

Fon apparently solved the compat issues with their shared Skype offer of a WiFi VoIP phone. A firmware available on their page anables the phones to log in on any portal page-enabled hotspot.

Plus, FON WiFi Connection Manager for Symbian devices is out too.

Whisher, on the other hand just released their Linux client. Try it and give us a thought on it!

Today’s question:

Is the recent buzz in HR
- a sign of human capital shortage or,
- demand for skilled workers to tackle new, disruptive projects?

FON is registered at WiMAX World Europe among other future WiMAX operators and is planning to rollout this technology. This news has not been promoted through the official corporate channels so this it’s fresh like a lime squeezed in a Corona.

Faisal Galaria, VP Business Development at Fon, will be speaking about their WiMAX plans as described in the conference program:

Thursday, May 31, 14:30Panel: Digital City Service Provider Business Models
Moderator: Roberta Wiggins, Research Fellow, Yankee Group
Panelists: Rafi Haladjian, CEO and founder, Ozone
Niall Murphy, CTO, The Cloud
Faisal Galaria, VP Business Development, Fon
Ben Murray, Head of Business Development, Seamless Mobility Solutions, Motorola Networks & Enterprise, EMEA
In the past year, a free service provider market has emerged with the expectation that advertising can substitute for free service. Companies like Google and MetroFi in the U.S. are trying to develop a unique revenue stream from local based advertising, and make nomadic broadband a universal service. But while they are giving service away, others are trying to create service revenues. A balance between the two vested interests needs to be created. Can advertising and content sales generate sufficient revenue to support free services? What additional sources of revenue can service providers exploit in building a sustainable business case?

If these guys keep making the news I might make a separate category for them. Hmm..
Yet, I still don’t think WiMAX will make it though! :P

Austria Center, Viena, will host May 29th through May 31st this year a major event: WiMAX World Europe!

We missed last year’s an I will personally miss this year’s also, because I’m a guest speaker at Telecoms Pricing Asia ‘07 that will be held in Singapore roughly in the same period.
Nevertheless, as much as I keep deconstructing the WiMAX (802.16e) hype, there’s good reasons to visit this forum. 2007 is one year closer to the actual rollout of the first commercial networks around Europe.

In Europe, the situation will be particularly interesting, and there are some key events that will help shape the market in this dynamic region over the coming years. Many regulators will make their decisions on how to allocate the important 2.5GHz spectrum, in effect ruling on whether WiMAX will have access to 3G-class frequencies, or will have to focus entirely on 3.5GHz until new spectrum options become available. In the 3.5GHz area, most major economies will have auctioned licenses by the end of 2007, spurring one of the most concentrated build-out programs in the world from the middle of the year, with particular growth opportunities in the eastern part of the continent and the Middle East, the Conference Chairs say.

Get busy to register early as Expo Passes are free of charge if you sign in before 4/13/07!

Mike Puchol (tech.am) revisited the YouTube mith that shows FON’s La Fonera runs so hot that the casing eventually melts, posing a real consumer elecronic hasard.

As unlikely it is, as he concludes, to have the router melt because of its hot inards, he also does a little interesting math, outlining the average lifespan of a Fonera limited to one year due to overheating.

“The capacitors in the Fonera are made by Taicon, a taiwanese manufacturer, and are max-rated for 105ºC. From the datasheet [PDF], at this temperature, the capacitor will fail after some 2000 hours, around 83 days. Following Arrhenius’ Law, and since the area around the capacitors was found to be at around 52ºC, their expected life would be 7800 hours, or about 325 days - what a coincidence, almost a full year, after which your warranty has expired.”

It’s pretty bad news for all enthousiastic Foneros and hey, to the mother company too. That puts a clock on a time bomb in the WiFi industry. The million hotspots Fon wants to plant by 2008 could be just a dream in these circumstances, since half of those will eventually die by the time the deployment is complete. Vaporware, anyone? This is not fun wireless!

Romanian-based outsourcing company, Fortech, is hiring C/C++, Java and .Net developers in an effort to grow its software operations.
Having worked with Swisscom, T-Systems and Symantec, Fortech is a leading outsourcing company in South-Eastern Europe. Check out their HR campaign blog for more info and available jobs: http://www.fortech.ro/wearehiring/

The OLPC was presented today to Romanian officials in the Education Ministry by Nicholas Negroponte.
Should the project pass in the Parliament in the next few days, the Romanian Government will purchase $150 million worth of OLPCs (a million units) by fall.
This is awesome news and we’re supporting the bill - both the political and the tax one - as the machine has some neat features that will empower the less financially fortunate children. Aleso, these kids will later benefit from our free WiFi project - c*free wireless.
We’ll try to get our hands on a sample to provide a more coherent understanding of its wireless capabilities in real life usage.

Tech details:
The laptop runs Linux, the display uses LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon) in the form of a projector and features a 7.5 inch, 1200×900 pixel, TFT screen and self-refreshing display with higher resolution (200 DPI) than 95% of the laptops on the market today. Two display modes are available: a transmissive, full-color mode; and a reflective, high-resolution mode that is sunlight readable. It also features a Video camera 640×480 resolution, 30FPS, an AMD Geode GX-500@1.0W CPU running @ 366 Mhz X86/X87-compatible and a Marvell Libertas 88W8388+88W8015, 802.11b/g compatible, dual adjustable, rotating coaxial antennas (that support diversity reception), wireless interface!

You probably haven’t heard of Flavia Stoian. Well, not if your business is selling icecream in India, no. Otherwise, get ready to plunge into a world dominated by this girl. She just laid her hands on a top notch Sony Vaio to power her mobile life. Why is this important, you ask? Well it’s simply because that’s probably the last toy this girl geek needs to have to redefine the wireless world. Don’t let me say “I told you so” when it’s all done. Just take my word for granted!

Go, kid! Make some magic! ;)

We drink beer at WiF:))
As a social and…productivity beverage we choose beer at times, instead of coffee or energy drinks. Yes, we are made of flesh and blood, go out, spend not more than half a day online and enjoy a good beer and feature chit-chats.

Personally I’ve developed this habit lately. Working at night requires a beverage. Since during the day I spend a long time behind the weel of a 1.3l car, beer is reserved for the evenings. The habit means every other day I try a different import brand of beer.
Today I tried a beer called “Claro!” (5.0% / clarobeer.com). It’s a Corona wannabe, but quite surprisingly, great tasting. As a matter of fact, if I had the eyes tied up I’d say it feels, smells and tastes like a genuine Corona. It’s made in the Netherlands and it’s about a buck cheaper than the Mexican counterpart. Granted, I had no lime to enhance the taste, but that’s fine.
The past week comprised in sessions of Salitos, Corona and Beck’s. Longing for Radler, Bibop, Kostritzer and Tzishke. Maybe next week, provided my favorite retail store has those in stock. Unlikely…

Allright. Claro! - what an awful name! - gets 4 out of 5 grains of rice*. That makes it a fav buy the next time and I’ll make sure to refill. Make this the beer of this week for the great taste and cute “let’s smack Corona in Europe” tryout. Join me next time for the following edition of the most serious series on WiF:)) - “Beating last week’s cerveza!”

* we’ll use grains of rice to define the quality of the beer. 1 stands for “yuck”. 5 stands for ‘exquisite’.

A Duke University graduate missed so much the life he had in the dorm, and decided to build something that would remind him of it. So, he invested about $400 and 150 hours to create a beer tossing fridge! The device gadget has a range of about 20 feet, it’s been tested and it’s fairly accurate, and it’s controlled by a car remote control.

Being Saturday, wireless and fun, this story deserved a quote on WiF:)) and if it’s going to be produced and put on sale, we will definitely get one! We would have it throw cafe lattes during the week, and beers in the weekend of course…
In the meanwhile this is our source (CNN.com) and you can watch a video here. The official web page for this is www.beerlauncher.com and talks about improvements to the device, and selling it on the market. I bet there is demand for it. ;-)

Don’t forget, Wireless is fun!

Sony is going wireless with its Cyber-shot camera presented yesterday at PMA 2007. Cyber-shot DSC-G1 can transfer images to any Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) device wirelessly and has a really interesting search system, which allows you to look for photos with the same face, same color or same composition. The six megapixels resolution is not that impressive and the 3x optical zoom lens keeps it into the amateur area.

Although the lens is stabilized with Sony’s Super SteadyShot image stabilization system you will still feel the need to check them and when this time comes the 3.5 inch LCD with 921K pixels of resolution will be there ready to help. For handling quickly moving subjects or low lighting conditions without a flash, the G1 can shoot at sensitivities up to ISO 1000, but for this you will have to use a tripod or hold it really steady.

The combination of a large amount of internal memory, 2GB, and large LCD mean that this camera is meant for sharing your images with your friends especially because the wireless enabled G1 can communicate with other G1s. A “collaborative” shooting mode lets up to four cameras send each other photos in real time.

Bill Gates: “America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete.”

Marius pointed me to this article in Financial Times the other day. I kept it in a tab and only paid some attention to it this afternoon. I’m sorry I did so.

We pointed to an ever increasing number of non-US internet startups in our previous posts. It didn’t look like much other than usual headlines. Come to think about it now, I realized that the US stopped being the sole fertile ground for disruptive ventures that rock our online lives.

The ‘buzzes and hypes’ are now global and we can finally use the whole map of the world to place hotspots of innovation and leadership. It’s news that emerged in silence and evolved into a shocking reality that the world (and especially the US) will start to grasp in the months to come: the US is about to lose its tech lead!

Sure, there’s still some quiet mourning in our WiF offices about the fact that most of “the net” is nested in a place called Silicon Valley. If anything is about to happen in the tech world it’s now being designed and tested in the Bay Area, in Texas or Nevada, New York and somewhat Chicago (for all-advertising). We’d love to be there too as geeks have their ways of congregating. But the restrictive US immigration policies make us think twice.
Exactly like we are, fellow entrepreneurs and skilled tech gurus now turn their heads to Europe or Asia as good places to start a flourishing internet business. The economical, human and technological gap is narrowing. There’s countries that support innovation by law and political lobby (like Estonia, for example), countries that have a very louring tax environment (like Luxembourg), some that have great infrastructure like Germany and S. Korea, or some that have very very high skilled but cheap workers like Romania.

This is becoming alarmingly real for the US and great for the world as a global trend. Establishing further ‘Silicon Valleys’ in other non-traditional places is bound to happen in the near future and is a good example that innovation and business leadership are not reserved or restricted to a single supplier.

I reckon this trend will gain more momentum as relaxing the US immigration policy it a long and difficult process. How long until Silicon Valley becomes a historical monument, pilgrimage destination for geeks?