As Forbes.com did on the question whether Siri is an android killer, it is now attempting to create a controversy on whether Google’s Android will be paying billions to Apple. Continue reading
Google’s Android May Pay Billions To Apple
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Category Archives: Patents
Recorded Sound Collections Even Older Than We Thought
Move over Thomas Edison
Since the Mobile Web is likely to increasingly use sound technology, it is perhaps fitting to note that sound technology is even older than we had thought. As the New York Times describes, the oldest known recording will be presented on 28 March at a conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in California.
It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable ? converted from squiggles on paper to sound ? by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
?This is a historic find, the earliest known recording of sound,? said Samuel Brylawski, the former head of the recorded-sound division of the Library of Congress, who is not affiliated with the research group but who was familiar with its findings. The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio.
Scott?s 1860 phonautogram was made 17 years before Edison received a patent for the phonograph and 28 years before an Edison associate captured a snippet of a Handel oratorio on a wax cylinder. That recording until now was widely regarded by experts as the oldest that could be played back. The phonautograph inventor, ?douard-L?on Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison.
One can also remark on the pace at which technology advanced in the mid-19th century. What used to take decades then is measured on a time scale of years in the 21st century.
The Non-spatial Internet
Hot Mobile News
Microsoft starts test of new VoIP server
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, due for release in the April-June quarter of 2007, will push the software giant into the business telephone market at a time when many large companies shift to cheaper telecommunications powered by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.
Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, due for release in the April-June quarter of 2007, will push the software giant into the business telephone market at a time when many large companies shift to cheaper telecommunications powered by Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.
Orange Mobile Uset Access to PC Content
France Telecom, owner of mobone operator Orange, is offering a service that lets mobile phone users access videos, music and other content from their PCs. Called “Mon PC a distance,” the service requires users to download a free software client onto their PCs.
France Telecom, owner of mobone operator Orange, is offering a service that lets mobile phone users access videos, music and other content from their PCs. Called “Mon PC a distance,” the service requires users to download a free software client onto their PCs.
Alliance and Leicester to introduce mobile banking
UK banking group Alliance and Leicester (A&L) is launching a mobile banking service in the new year that will run on the MoniLink network which was developed by IT services firm Morse and the Link Interchange Network.
UK banking group Alliance and Leicester (A&L) is launching a mobile banking service in the new year that will run on the MoniLink network which was developed by IT services firm Morse and the Link Interchange Network.
One of the strengths of the Internet is the ability to make connections. Arthur can converse and exchange ideas with Betty halfway around the world. Indeed ‘halfway around the world’ has no meaning for them. The Internet has no spatial coordinates. Arthur and Betty could without knowing be in adjacent rooms and the experience would be identical.
This non-spatial characteristic of the Internet is surprisingly becoming more of a deficiency as the Mobile Web becomes a reality. Once you’re moving around, it is so often useful to know whether some person or facility you are dealing with may be close at hand or far-away. The W3C Mobile Web Initiative is promoting ways of ensuring that a ‘point’ on the Internet (a URI) is satisfactorily visible whatever the device, whether a Desktop PC or a mobile device such as a cell phone. However this Internet point does not exist in physical space. It exists only in cyber-space. In a sense it’s everywhere and it’s nowhere.
When you are dealing with knowledge or ideas, this non-spatial nature of the Internet is not a problem. However many human activities are linked to a particular physical location. Where is the nearest Indian restaurant? Is there a bookstore close to here? Where is the railway station? That is why local search is such a hot topic. All the search engines are competing intensively to deliver the best process.
The most popular approaches seem to involve maps. For example Google Local Search at local.google.com immediately shows you a map. 
Technically it’s quite mind-blowing given the power of satellite surveillance. However in some cases, it relates to a geographical point defined by latitude and longitude, which can be somewhat difficult to use for many people. It’s much more useful in many cases to have the physical address of a location. .. not least to find out on which side of the street a building may be located.
Trying to find the actual coordinates of a location can be difficult as pointed out in an excellent post yesterday by William Slawski entitled Assigning Geographic Locations to Web Pages. He reviews a Google patent that describes how to try to determine geographical data for web sites. It draws on all the related information that may be found in associated web pages on the Internet. It really is amazing what powerful computing methods can attempt to cover in trying to get the correct address for a particular establishment.
As Bill notes in that post, there are ways in which the data could be amplified.
- A search engine could manually assign locations to pages.
- A site owner could manually assign locations to pages.
- Geographic meta tags could be used.
- A search engine could look for postal addresses on the same pages as the other keywords in the query.
Some of these methods are currently used but they never seem to get enough popular acceptance to make them universal winners.
Of course whatever is proposed to handle this problem must work for Mobile Local Search since that likely will be the most popular Internet application. While thinking over this problem, a simple business card caused a light bulb to come on. Why shouldn’t a web page have a kind of virtual business card that gave the key contact coordinates? Thus was born the idea of a LURI (Location Uniform Resource Identifier).
Every web page (URI) would have its associated LURI. This would be a mini-web page that could display the contact coordinates even on a cell phone screen. The LURI would be set out according to some agreed standard so that a given line would be used for say the City in which the entity behind the website is located. Further details are given on the right under Basic Concepts and the idea will be elaborated in future posts.
This is the subject of a pending patent.
Related:
Yellow Pages Tackles Local Search
Local Search On The World Wide Web
Tags: Mobile, local search, LURI
Ubiquitous Web – Visiting A Museum
The Ubiquitous Web was introduced with the following words in the previous post. As the Web reaches further into our lives, we will consider the increasing ubiquity of connectivity, what it means for real world objects to connect with the Web, and the increasing blurring of the lines between virtual worlds and our own.
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
A simple example will illustrate the power of this approach and show how using AGIs as bookmarks or favorites can help with that connectivity. Suppose a museum has a new exhibition for which it develops a website for its visitors. Each gallery and each major work in any gallery could have its own web page suitable for a Desktop PC, giving a complete account of the displayed item or group of displayed items.
The museum could also develop ‘parallel’ websites of corresponding web pages suitable for mobile devices for all galleries and major works. There could be versions designed for PDAs, for smart phones and for cell phones. These ‘parallel’ websites would give a streamlined account of the exhibits with whatever content each mobile device can handle. Every detailed Desktop PC web page would have its corresponding summary mobile device web pages.
Every one of these individual web pages would have its own URI. For example, the URI for a particular gallery for PDAs would be denoted by UPDA. The set of URIs for all the different device web pages for a given gallery would then be defined in an AGI or ordered set of the URIs. Every one of the individual web pages would contain the AGI information for the web page set it belonged to, as shown below:
(UDesktop, UPDA, Usmartphone, Ucellphone)
Before The Visit
Someone exploring the museum online before visiting the physical museum could select the particular web pages for the items of particular interest. They would then develop a visit list of the AGIs for these favorite items or galleries. The museum web site would allow them to register and hold this list of favorite AGIs or bookmarks in their own personal registered account on the museum’s website.
During The Visit
When visitors arrived at the museum, they could use their own mobile devices (PDA, smart phone or cell phone) or perhaps rent one from the museum. They could then first visit the museum website and access their registered account to bring up their previously selected list of favorite AGIs. Since they would now be using a mobile device, all web pages seen would be those appropriate to that particular mobile device. They could then select from this visit list, the particular favorite or favorites they wanted to check first. The corresponding mobile web pages would provide a type of executive summary about the item or gallery of interest they had already reviewed at home on their desktop computers.
If all galleries in the Museum were equipped with WiFi, then the visitor while wandering around might see other items of interest and could check the corresponding mobile web pages. The most interesting would have their AGIs added to the list of favorites. Equally if some item turned out not to be of particular interest, the corresponding AGI could be removed from the favorite list.
After The Visit
On returning home, the visitor could use the updated AGI favorite list to do an online replay of the visit to the physical museum. He or she could revisit the favorite items and galleries checking the more complete information available on the desktop web pages for the museum.
Once the ideal tour had been developed, this modified list of favorite AGIs could be sent to a friend by email. With this type of AGI favorite list, the sender could be assured that every favorite will give a satisfying user experience, whether viewed on a desktop PC, a PDA, a smart phone or a cell phone. Now that’s ubiquity.
Related: Visiting A Museum – Augmented Experience
AGIs are the subject of a pending patent.
Tags: ubiquitous, Web, museum
Bookmarks and Favourites
Hot Mobile News
Mobile gaming dominated by women
Between 39% and 46% of females from 12 to 44 play games preloaded onto their mobiles. Among males 18-24 44% have played preloaded mobile games, and the numbers in other age groups fall off sharply. When it comes to actually purchasing mobile games, females 18-24 lead all with 23% having done so compared to 19% for their male counterparts.
Between 39% and 46% of females from 12 to 44 play games preloaded onto their mobiles. Among males 18-24 44% have played preloaded mobile games, and the numbers in other age groups fall off sharply. When it comes to actually purchasing mobile games, females 18-24 lead all with 23% having done so compared to 19% for their male counterparts.
RSS READER: HubDog for Windows Mobile Smartphones released
So far available for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs only, Soci?t? Radio Num?rique (SRN) finally released a Windows Mobile Smartphone client for its HubDog service as well.
So far available for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs only, Soci?t? Radio Num?rique (SRN) finally released a Windows Mobile Smartphone client for its HubDog service as well.
.. or should that be Bookmarks and Favorites. Bookmarks are what Google, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Mozilla Firefox and many others call them. However Microsoft Internet Explorer sticks to the U.S. spelling and calls them Favorites even in the UK. However you refer to them, you know what we’re talking about. It’s your list of your favourite spots on the Internet to visit. You might even send one of them to a friend if you think it’s a particularly memorable experience.
Given that your friend may use a different device, perhaps even a smart phone, it would be ideal if everyone stuck to the One Web Principle. This ensures that content provided by accessing a URI yields a thematically coherent experience when accessed from different devices. In other words, even if your friend doesn’t see it exactly as you do, they will get something that hangs together and gives the essence of what you experienced. So the traditional view is that your Bookmark list or Favorite list is a set of URIs.
That’s fine in principle, but it currently doesn’t work in practice. This is why StayGoLinks is promoting the idea of a Multi-Web Practice, where website owners arrange associated web pages that contain the same essence but are suitable for a variety of devices. Each web page has its own URI but the set is held in an array that is called an AGI (Array of Graphic Identifiers). If the Bookmark or Favorite list contains AGIs instead of URIs, then any viewer can see the content in a view optimized for their specific device. Such an AGI Bookmark can safely be sent via e-mail with the assurance that the recipient will see the content in a satisfactory manner.
Typically such an AGI might contain URIs for web pages suitable for a Desktop PC, a PDA and a cell phone. However the idea can easily be extended to include other URIs that are often already in existence and are linked to the particular web page content. In a sense these are developed for other “devices”. For example there may be a news feed associated with the web page (viewed in a news feed aggregator). There may also be a print version of the web version (output to a printer), perhaps provided in a PDF format. There could even be a podcast or a video. Provided each of these is identified by a URI, then the AGI for this could include all the URIs for these other “devices”. The AGI would then be displayed in the following format:
(UPC,UPDA,Ucell,URSS,UPDF,Uvideo)
Pushing the concept even further, other types of associated files can be listed in the AGI. For example at the moment, web designers try to ensure that web pages will be coded in such a way that they are accessible to those with visual acuity problems using a Screen Reader. Such Accessibility for web pages is now becoming a legal necessity in some jurisdictions. With the AGI concept, an associated web page could be designed specifically for a Screen Reader and its URI would then become a further element in the AGI. This is a very much easier project than trying to apply a special CSS style sheet for the aural media type (intended for speech synthesizers) to a regular web page. Again the Screen Reader would only have to download the URI specifically prepared for it, thus reducing bandwidth requirements.
In summary, with AGIs you really can exchange your Bookmarks or Favorites with your friends with reasonable assurance that they’ll be as impressed as you were.
Associated Concepts: URI << One Web || Multi-Web >> AGI
AGI, a multi-dimensional version of the URI
Hot Mobile News
Sprint to offer Google e-mail for mobile phones
Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest U.S. wireless services provider, will start offering a mobile version of Google Inc.’s e-mail service to encourage subscribers to use features besides calling.
Sprint Nextel Corp., the third-largest U.S. wireless services provider, will start offering a mobile version of Google Inc.’s e-mail service to encourage subscribers to use features besides calling.
Bang & Olufsen Enters Cell Phone Market with Elegant Serene
Bang & Olufsen America, Inc., a supplier of high-end home theatre and custom multiroom music systems, is taking a dive into the ever-growing cell phone market with a mobile device designed for the upper echelon society. The Serene, which will sell for a cool US$1,275, is the product of the firm’s collaboration with Samsung Electronics Mobile Business.
Bang & Olufsen America, Inc., a supplier of high-end home theatre and custom multiroom music systems, is taking a dive into the ever-growing cell phone market with a mobile device designed for the upper echelon society. The Serene, which will sell for a cool US$1,275, is the product of the firm’s collaboration with Samsung Electronics Mobile Business.
Nokia launches first mobile device powered by Microsoft software
The Nokia 330 is powered by Windows CE and runs Route66 GPS car navigation software. Clearly Nokia is late to the market of GPS navigation devices, and to catch up in this area Nokia goes the fast route and is using Windows CE – the core of Windows Mobile. Windows CE is also used by big number of manufacturers of GPS car navigation devices.
The Nokia 330 is powered by Windows CE and runs Route66 GPS car navigation software. Clearly Nokia is late to the market of GPS navigation devices, and to catch up in this area Nokia goes the fast route and is using Windows CE – the core of Windows Mobile. Windows CE is also used by big number of manufacturers of GPS car navigation devices.
An earlier post on The One Web Principle Or A Multi-Web Practice suggested that the One Web Principle will perhaps never get sufficient traction. The reasons for this are that the One Web Principle is
(A) technically challenging, given the wide variety of devices
(B) involves web pages that are too large for mobile devices, given costly bandwidth and limited battery capacities
(C) is unlikely to develop any momentum among web designers given Reasons A and B, and
(D) given Reason C, other solutions will be developed to avoid the need for the One Web Principle
This position may be seen as too pessimistic by some. However there is some support for the view that the Tower of Babel would have been more likely than a consensus on mobile standards.
One alternative to the One Web Principle is the Multi-Web Practice. This encourages website owners to develop a number of associated web pages, each optimized for a particular device. For a small number of these, this can sometimes be achieved by using alternative CSS style sheets. However this does not avoid the extra burdens imposed on Mobile devices that were discussed above.
Accepting that different but associated web pages will be provided for different devices can avoid the Mobile device burdens. Each device can receive a web page optimized for its own capabilities. The one penalty that attaches to this approach is how associated web pages can maintain linkages to show this association. This is where StayGoLinks has a solution to propose
The One Web Principle sets as a goal that content provided by accessing a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) yields a thematically coherent experience when accessed from different devices. The AGI, which stands for Array of Graphic Identifiers, is the equivalent entity when considering the Multi-Web Practice. If a series of associated web pages are developed for a series of devices, then the AGI for this series of associated web pages is a vector of the URIs for the individual web pages. A simple example will illustrate this.
Suppose web pages are designed to present the same content or summary of the content to the following devices:
- High Resolution Desktop device
- Low Resolution Desktop device
- PDA
- Smart Phone
- Cell Phone
Each web page has its own URI. The full series are U1, U2, U3, U4 and U5. The AGI for this series of web pages would then be a vector of the 5 URIs usually displayed as follows:
(U1, U2, U3, U4, U5)
Under this arrangement, the 2nd device would always use the 2nd URI in the AGI vector. If someone else had looked at the same content using a device of the 4th type, they would then have been using the 4th URI, which is U4. If they store the AGI as a Favorite, they can access that same web page content via another device, say the first device, and automatically their device of type 1 would use the first URI, that is U1.
Equally they could e-mail the AGI to a friend and their friend’s device would then view the web page content by accessing the appropriate URI.
The AGI concept is very powerful and can be extended in a variety of ways. This will be discussed in future posts. The whole is the subject of a pending patent.
Associated Concepts: URI << One Web || Multi-Web >> AGI
Windows Mobile For Greater Creativity
Hot Mobile News
Mobile phone virus hits Dar es Salaam
Mobile phone users have been warned that a virus that has reached Dar es Salaam is destroying a number of handsets, especially those with blue-tooth technology. The virus moves from one blue-tooth-enabled phone to another when both are left in the “discoverable” mode. This happens without the user’s knowledge. Once it gains entry to the phone, it deletes files from the phone, dials expensive numbers on its own, and most visibly, drains the cell-phone’s batteries.
Mobile phone users have been warned that a virus that has reached Dar es Salaam is destroying a number of handsets, especially those with blue-tooth technology. The virus moves from one blue-tooth-enabled phone to another when both are left in the “discoverable” mode. This happens without the user’s knowledge. Once it gains entry to the phone, it deletes files from the phone, dials expensive numbers on its own, and most visibly, drains the cell-phone’s batteries.
Windows Mobile brings an interesting article by Kevin Ebi titled How to Be Creative in Business. It draws on the ideas of Michael Michalko, author of Cracking Creativity.
The first stage is brainstorming. It’s important to write every idea down, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. It’s also the stage where your Windows Mobile powered device can be the greatest help. Odds are the best ideas will come as you’re out and about ? not at your desk.
Mobile devices are much more effective than cocktail napkins and the back of envelopes. Recording all your thoughts in a Pocket Word document or dictating them into your Smartphone is a great way to make sure you don’t lose any ideas. And having all your ideas together also makes it easier to organize your thoughts and find the gems later on.
Pocket PCs can also help you develop mind maps, which are diagrams that help you brainstorm ideas and show how they’re related to each other. At the center is the concept that’s the subject of your brainstorm. Attached to it are related concepts, which can form new clusters of related ideas.
Sounds like a great idea. However you’ll probably need an Ultra-portable if you’re at all creative. This and other ideas can be found at Windows Mobile Home for Business.
Tags: Mobile, creativity
StayGoLinks Is Born
You may well question ‘Why another blog?’ Well it is justified by the Long Tail nature of the Internet world. The Internet world is vast. Scattered throughout it are an infinitesimally small fraction of people for whom this blog will be of interest. However multiply a very large number by a very small fraction and you may still end up with a sizeable audience or market. That’s the theme of the book, The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson that came out this week. There are some similarities between the Long Tail blog and this blog. These will become apparent as this blog develops.
For the moment, let’s stick with the name. StayGoLinks. One of my most deeply held convictions is that it is absolutely essential that a company name be visible on the Internet. It should not be easily confused or lost in the Internet forest. What does that name ‘StayGoLinks’ conjure up for you? How may it be confused with other entities?
Here are some possible word associations. Perhaps it might be associated with a golf course. That would be golf links as they’re often known in Scotland in either Staygo or possibly South Taygo. Neither of these geographical places seems to exist, although it would be intriguing to be proved wrong on that.
Another possibility is some shorthand for the quality test used by Sainsbury’s, the very successful grocery chain in the UK. TAYGo is short for ‘Taste As You Go‘. Then there’s a website, Taygo.com, where you can trade video games directly with other gamers and get the games you want for less. Or perhaps there’s a patron saint associated with that Aygo car produced by Toshiba in Europe. That would make it St. Aygo. Well there’s no such saint so that confusion is avoided.
The only remaining possible confusion is with the words Stay or Go. That combination is a very popular theme according to Google, either in Divorce circles or with Homeland Security. However that’s not it either. The words Stay and Go are involved but directly linked cheek by jowl, almost like the two faces of Janus. In fact Janus is also the god of gates and doorways, which may be thought to have a vague association with our topic too.
For the moment the enigma will remain. It’s StayGoLinks and you can read into it what you will. All will be revealed in due course.
Related: SWOT That Company Name
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