The Perfect PDA/Smartphone

Does it exist? Some would argue the the iPhone comes pretty close and I actually agree. It does come close but still no cigar in my opinion. Then on the 'other side' (and many of those people who argue the iPhone is it would call this the 'dark side' :-) ) there are the Windows Mobile devices. Most interesting at the moment in that camp are the HTC Touch Diamond and Pro (for those would prefer keyboards). Also no cigar in my opinion. I have a Diamond and tho its a flashy phone, its still plagued by several problems. It has its good sides too tho. 

What I like about the Diamond:

• incredible screen quality; its got a really good screen, the best I've seen and beats iPhone
• its nice and small
• its full featured with GPS, 3G & HDSPA, not only pictures but video recording, Video calls, Opera Mobile 9.5 (equivalent to Safari) 
• its 'open'; tho it uses Windows Mobile 6.1, there are no built-in restrictions that I'm aware of (example VOIP over 3G or GPRS) and 3rd party developers have access to all the tools required to create apps for it
• it supports background processes to run (like an IM client)

What I don't like about the Diamond:

• The touch interface is flakey; it doesn't respond well and consistently to swipes and other gestures. Case in point is try adding a city in the US to the built-in weather application. This is a real test of patience....
• in general its kinda slow (yes I have the latest ROM); most things take a second or more, which over time really starts wearing on you...
• Battery life, battery life.... Ok this is in general a problem in the industry, heavily outdated battery technology for the kinds of functions that we find in smartphones/pda's these days. It is completely unacceptable tho that when I start my morning with a fully charged battery at 8am and by 1pm the phone dies because the battery is depleted. What did I do? Not all that much 2 or 3 short phone calls, a little web browsing (maybe 45mins in total) and having Windows Live messenger running in the background. Nothing extraordinary I believe and the kind of usage pattern that you can expect for a multimedia internet device like the Diamond. Actually I haven't even used the built-in music player during this session and I've noticed previously that that also drains the battery in a serious way...
• Windows Mobile; tho Touchflo hides some of Windows mobile ugliness, its still a kind of clunky bolt-on that adds to the slowness of the interface. Windows Mobile itself tho marginally improved over the years is light years behind iPhone's interface in my humble opinion. I'm talking about the Windows Mobile Professional versions here for touch screens. I don't have any experience with the standard version (which is for so called smartphones without touch screen).

I do not have personal usage experience with the iPhone (other than having played with other's 1st gen iPhone on occassion) but what little I have experienced, the interface is superior to that of Windows Mobile + Touchflo... The iPhone touch interface works consistently and is fast in response unlike the Diamond with touchflo... Its still not perfect either in my opinion because of the 'closed' nature. A few things I don't like:

• no background processes (IM client)
• restrictions (no VOIP over GPRS/EDGE/3G)! I guess Apple had to do this in other to have AT&T's support??
• Apple's kind of controlling nature over 3rd party development

I understand from colleagues that have the iPhone (1st gen still) that battery isn't really great for them either. About 1 day is the average maximum.

The one other interesting phone out there (to me at least) is the Samsung Omnia i900. This phone is also based on Windows Mobile 6.1 so I suspect it will have some of the same problems (and also good points) as the Touch Diamond.

Conclusion, the 'perfect' PDA-phone still does not exist. I hope someone is working on a killer battery! Maybe Android will be an interesting OS. I hope Apple opens up more and Microsoft should start the mobile OS from scratch and incorporate lessons from Apple's interface building.

I'm sure we'll see some interesting devices yet in the future. One other development I'm looking forward to is WiMax. Any others anyone?

Computing in the Cloud

Cloud Computing, it seems a buzz word these days, with various companies vying for customer attention. Thinking about it, from a personal perspective, as a consumer, it makes a lot of sense. If you've used computers for more than a few years, you'll have accumulated quite a bit of digital data by now. You will have, I'm sure as I have, struggled (to a certain degree at least) with backups of all that data. Another issue is having multiple computers and keeping data in-sync and/or at least available from any of those puters.
There are of course varying ways to solve the issue(s) of data availability, access and backup. However, with a large degree of certainty we can say that most of the solutions that we come up with (file servers or other forms of sharable centralized storage), will eventually fail, since ultimately they all rely on harddisks. Not to mention the issue of accessing all your data when you're on the move.
I'm not even seriously considering Tape backup as an option for my 'consumer' oriented usage.

When I analyze the nature of my data, I can segregate into 3 main categories:
1. Entertaiment (movies, music)
2. Personal memories (photo's, files)
3. Administrative data

At the moment I don't know of any well-known services that can handle the first category 'in the cloud'. I have heard of some that do this for music and of course there is Youtube for the short 10 minute type videos of personal nature.

For the second and third categories, there are now a myriad of services available in the cloud that when you think about it make a lot of sense. With regards to personal memories; photos is a big one and being able to safely store that 'in the cloud' is pretty valuable and very convenient for me. Having my precious photos available from any Internet connected puter or mobile device and not having to worry about backups, eventually failing HD's, which will cause me to loose if not all, at least some of my precious memories. Its a pretty compelling kind of service to me and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
That to me demostrates the power of computing 'in the cloud' and I haven't even touched on the services provided by the likes of Google (with Google Apps) and other that allow you to create Office compatible docs online and even allow for collaborative working on your docs. Yet another powerful example of 'cloud computing'.

The business perspective, as in how can businesses 'cash in' on the value proposition of 'cloud computing' is not entirely clear yet. Intuitively we can feel that there is going to be lots of value for business too (the value proposition seems somewhat akin to Outsourcing of your infrastructure, but with a plus). However, there are other factors to take into account such as security that make public cloud computing a lot less appealing for them. Creating virtual private clouds on the other hand (to combat the security issue) seems to take away some of the intrinsic value of having your date available at any time, from anywhere and sharable with anyone...

Very interesting times indeed!!

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Is Virtualization all about the OS?

Interesting how much of the fighting talk around virtualization vendors seems to be happening in the Australian media these days. After an interview with an Australian VMware exec in which he says that Windows will be dead in about 5 to 10 years (read here).
The rebuttal now comes from one of Microsoft's new buddies Red Hat. Who would've thought that about a year ago eh? The most unlikely alliances seem to be formed, in an effort to try and reverse the seemingly unstoppable march of VMware in the enterprise.
Its a natural reaction perhaps that the OS vendors 'attack' from their 'comfort zone', that what they know best (the OS). Actually, its interesting that Microsoft lets others make the more outrages claims, such as:

"Virtualisation is all about how applications interface with the operating system. This is one thing that Microsoft agrees 100 per cent with us on."

Silly me, now why did I think it was all about uncoupling the applications from the underlying hardware and making them portable? Hmmm crazy idea...

"We are in a unique position because we are strong in virtualisation and we are strong in the operating system area with Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

No doubt that Red Hat has some server market share and that they have been successful in cobbling together a few pieces of Open Source software. Ironic perhaps to think that one of the reasons of their success is that people might have seen them as their savior from Microsoft.

"We and Microsoft we are the only two vendors with all the pieces together for a full virtualisation system."

I guess he's conveniently forgetting Microsoft's other buddy here (Novell/Suse), not to mention many others (Sun, etc...)

"Many other vendors are putting hypervisors in the market by themselves without the operating system. That's like having just a mousepad and no mouse - there's not much you can do with it," Cormier says. "To some extent that's what VMware is.

What else can you say about such a laughable statement...

Whether or not a company survives and thrives in the future, is a subtle combination of a number of factors. They definitely need to either have vision ('out of the box' thinking kind of new ideas) and the ability to execute on their vision or be very fast followers to be successful.
There will always be some that try it with what I can negativists strategies, where they attempt to paint themselves as the winners, based on more quantitive than qualitative measures and without adding any new content to the larger industry discussion.

Mobile Service Providers Price Comparison

Considering my wildly varying mobile phone bill, my new HTC Touch Diamond and considering my monthly phone usage, I decided to conduct a comparison review of the major providers in Belgium. It doesn't look good for my particular usage profile (I have regular int'l coms with Malaysia) in that I don't seem to be able come in much below the 100€ mark...
Anyways below is the result.
Would be interested to hear from others with similar usage profiles.
Cheers for now.