Bencredible

I am currently pissed at Apple and the iPhone, more specifically the inability to get Google Voice on my iPhone and the lame App Store policies.  My next phone? I’m going to have to guess… oh, I don’t know… THIS ONE!!!

I think Apple had it right back in the iPhone 1.0 days: Apps are web sites. Conventional wisdom would say that I’m wrong, I mean look at the popularity of the App store. However, iPhone apps are just that: applications for the iPhone (and sometimes the iPod Touch.)  What about all the other devices out there?

In an ideal world I could develop an application for the web and have it deploy to any mobile device from an iPhone to a Blackberry to a Windows Mobile device. The web browsers in these devices are actually quite powerful. Take a look at Google Latitude to see what I mean.

The problem is that since we have native apps there is little to no reason to develop a standard to pull the device hardware forward to the web browser. If I want to develop an application that can utilize the tilt sensors in an iPhone and a Blackberry I would have to write different code for each. That’s not the ideal solution. Each device should be able to present its hardware to the browser in a standard way that anyone can take advantage of. And nearly all hardware should be available from the on-board sensors, GPS, phone, ambient light sensor, etc., etc.

Looking at 99% of the iPhone apps out there I see little to no work that could not be done in the browser should they be able to take advantage of all the hardware. The final piece of the puzzle is an offline mode for apps that require heavy animations for weather and whatnot that allow the app to run even when there is no bandwidth. A giant cache folder as it were.

This is a bit of an idealistic view of how things should run. Apple already tried it once and failed. I don’t think they were wrong, I just think they were early without enough tools. Hopefully someone will try again but this time make it a standard that will work on any device with a webkit browser at its core.

There is one aspect that I have not figured out how to run in a browser: 3d games.  I have yet to figure out a workaround for those.

What do you think?  Am I crazy or could this someday be the future of mobile computing?

The promise of satellite phones to replace cellular phones has been around for years and has never come to fruition. There are many issues with satellite phones that make the cellular network a better idea, the biggest of which is capacity. On a cell network all I need to do is add an additional tower and I add a bunch of capacity. With satellite when I run out of capacity, I’m screwed.

Nevertheless I still believe that satellite telecom has its place and could eventually overtake terrestrial cell towers. Satellite has a huge advantage over cell which is coverage. One satellite can cover an entire continent whereas one cell tower only covers around 20 miles or so. I could drive coast to coast with a Satellite phone, but not with a cell phone.

How many users need to drive coast to coast? Not very many. But you may notice that your service varies greatly even in your own city as you drive around and bounce from tower to tower. This is where satellite phone service can revolutionize mobile phone service. No matter where you go you would always have full bars, so long as you never go indoors.

So why don’t we have satellite phones everywhere today? Well, several reasons. The phones are large and bulky. The antennae is amazingly huge and ugly. The cost is extremely high to make a single phone call. The devices don’t work indoors. It just is not as refined a technology as cellular. At this point satellite won’t be a viable option for, well, much of anyone.

Enter TerreStar.

TerreStar is getting ready to launch their next generation satellite phone network. Much like how the Globalstar network was designed, the TerreStar network is not just satellite but a combination of satellite and cellular. In the US if you have AT&T service the phone will connect to that and make the call there. If you’re out of AT&T range or need a little love the TerreStar phone will connect to the satellite network. This is all great, but as I mentioned Globalstar already did this (with Verizon rather than AT&T.) Where TerreStar differs is that their phone looks like any other smartphone. No huge ugly antennae.

Will this service trump current cellular service?  At first, no. Satellite needs to be priced properly and add enough advantage to overtake cellular. As the service is proven it could supplement traditional cell service. If TerreStar is able to find a way to penetrate buildings, we could have a complete replacement to cellular on the horizon here. Just as people moved from telegraph to corded phones then to wireless phones and on to cell phones, it is completely possible they will move from cell phones to satellite phones.

That’s not what excites me though. Imagine a global network in which Apple can control the entire experience. The device works anywhere on  the planet except the poles. Indoors, outdoors. No roaming, no long distance. A universal smartphone, an iPhone, that works anywhere on the device manufacturers terms. The only thing missing is the bandwidth which as I understand it is around 600Kbps. Very fast for satellite but a far cry from the 7.2Mbps next generation network AT&T is installing.

It is possible we’re witnessing a complete revolution in wireless phone technology. How cool is that?

I have a development iPhone and as such I have the 3.0 firmware on mine.  I also own a .mac account.  Aaaaand I saw the latest WWDC keynote that talked about a really, really cool feature called ‘Find my iPhone’.

This feature in and of itself is very awesome.  What if I want to take it a step further though?

I work in a position in which I could be needed 24×7x365.  I am not alone.  Many doctors may need to be paged, many other companies have their own Ben (albeit not as good looking) which run infrastructure and need to always be on call.  Sure we can carry a pager with us, but LAME.  Now you’re thinking, why not just use SMS on my iPhone? Ah, why indeed…

SMS is great, acts a lot like a pager, only problem is that when I silence my phone in a movie and forget to unsilence it when I get home and someone needs to get me, they can’t.  If my phone is in my pocket while driving and I don’t hear the initial ping, then I may not get the message for several hours.  There are many scenarios where either the phone is silenced or I simply need a more annoying alert.  One could argue that it is a workflow issue, but I would argue back that many, many others have this exact same issue.

The solution is to extend the ‘Find my iPhone’ paging feature to trusted users.  Allow other family members, or business acquaintances to page my iPhone and have the phone ignore its silent status, nagging me until I accept the critical message.  Keep in mind this would only be used in a ‘my patient is dying, I need to get the Dr. NOW’ or ‘All servers are offline and you’ll be out of a job on Monday if you don’t answer’ type scenario.  That way when I’m in the middle of a wedding, the bride is about to say “I DO!” and my iPhone starts making a pinging noise, I don’t have to get really pissed at whoever pinged me (although the bride will ban me from all future events).

I could give out my me.com account info to everyone who needs to page me (and I probably will) but that means that everyone can see my address book, read my e-mail and get other information that is personal.  I *just* want to give them access to the ability to page my iPhone without the ability to see my information.

I think this would be an awesome addition to the iPhone lineup and would be very, very helpful for any professional that needs to be on-call 24×7.  Why carry a pager when an iPhone can do it all? Alas, I have a feeling that this will never, ever be deployed by Apple and with the lack of background apps I don’t think this can be built by a third party either.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to set up a dummy Me.com account and give everyone access.

It sure would be cool though, no?

A while back I made a post on TechnologyEvangelist.com talking about how I was a Technoholic. I came to this conclusion because I buy a lot of technology right as it comes out, which is probably the worst time to buy.

The Palm Pre release is imminent and as such I started thinking about how I would acquire one.  Then I started wondering why.  I have an iPhone, I really like my iPhone and I have no need for a Pre.  The Sprint network does not work in my house and I’m still in an AT&T contract.  What benefit would a Palm Pre bring me?

As I pondered this I realized that I’m not a technoholic but rather an infoholic.  The reason I buy this technology is because I like to know first hand what it is and isn’t good at, how it performs in real life situations and if I can suggest it to other people.  I become the go-to guy for all things tech because *I* have the information on the technology.  Not just information based on reviews and other users opinions, first hand opinions.  I love having the info, but I’m too stupid to monetize that information.  Information is power, duh!

Reviews and opinions are great although usually too shallow.  When people talk about the iPhone keyboard and they mention how much it sucks, but they don’t mention that after you learn to use it you can type very quickly on it, although rarely one handed and rarely in a car.  They forget to mention that because it is virtual they can do a lot more in that space than they could with a physical keyboard.  These details are usually left out of the reviews and instead all we get to read is, “keyboard sucks”.  So here I am, eager for the real life scoop on the products, paying for all of them out-of-pocket and not making anything in return.  Seems to be a bad habit of mine.

In the end it comes down to wanting the most information possible and I have found that to be an expensive habit.  When it comes to the Palm Pre I may just have to leave it to my friends at TreoCentral.com to review it for me and just trust that the tools I’m using today and good enough.

As a final note, I hope Apple learns a bit about the cool factor that Palm is bringing to the table such as wireless power, unified address books from Exchange to Facebook, community networking, background apps and understanding that an incoming phone call or SMS message shouldn’t abruptly stop whatever it is I’m doing!