During the keynote at the Cisco Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, held Nov. 9 to 11, CEO John Chambers wanted to make very clear that the networking company thinks video is absolutely important for effective collaboration.
Along those lines, Cisco Systems released a number of products and technologies to make video more accessible for users -- whether those users are in the office, on the road or working for a trusted partner. In addition, video is designed to be easier to use for one-on-one contact or group encounters, as well as for asynchronous information dispersal mechanisms like wikis or blogs.
At the summit, Cisco's representatives demonstrated many of the new capabilities on stage:
Video 1 (which is part one of two) demonstrates Cisco's ability to deliver a platform that fosters enterprise online communities, allows users to establish communications from within those communities and allows users to post, view or search video content. Using Flip video cameras, users can upload media directly into the community or a conversation via a PC or an iPhone.
Video 2 (part two of two) shows individual users joining a telepresence session using various hardware and software, and injecting documents and recorded video into the call, and demonstrates the promised future ability for WebEx users outside the corporate network to join the same telepresence session.
Video 3 demonstrates Cisco communication capabilities working across a range of devices (BlackBerry and iPhone, for instance, plus their integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Cisco's various desktop solutions -- moving calls between various devices to show how the session is maintained even though the presentation capabilities of the different devices vary. Cisco also unveils its new desktop wireless IP Phone.
Research in Motion today announced November availability for the Blackberry Bold 9700, their newest smartphone for GSM/UMTS networks. When comparing some of the key specifications of the Bold 9700 against that of its predecessor - last year's BlackBerry Bold 9000 - the new phone looks like a modest upgrade that adds some nice enhancements, while taking some other unique features away.
Certainly, the new device measures in slightly slimmer and lighter than last year's model, a welcome improvement given the Bold 9000 was one of the larger devices in RIM's stable. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 also promises a welcome enhancement in battery performance (for both talk time and standby time), promising longer usage despite the same size battery and same speed processor under the hood.
In what hopefully will be a welcome addition, the Bold 9700 features a small trackpad in place of the trackball featured on the Bold 9000, and other recent models such as the Tour, Curve or Pearl. Although I haven't had the chance to try out the trackpad yet, I hold out hope it will offer some relief against the annoyingly constant scrolling needed to navigate long Web pages or documents on those trackball-equipped devices.
Unfortunately, it appears that RIM also taketh away, as the Bold 9700 abandons the 802.11a support that was so unique to the Bold 9000, settling instead for a more common 802.11b/g implementation. While the loss of the 5 GHz Wi-Fi radio probably won't be a big deal for many, I nonetheless find the subtraction disappointing given that the recently ratified 802.11n standard will certainly drive more enterprise Wi-Fi traffic into the 5 GHz band in the near future.
The Bold 9700 will ship with the long-awaited BlackBerry 5.0 OS, which promises to deliver enhancements to BlackBerry calendar capabilities and e-mail management when used in conjunction with a Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 implementation.
Certainly, the new device measures in slightly slimmer and lighter than last year's model, a welcome improvement given the Bold 9000 was one of the larger devices in RIM's stable. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 also promises a welcome enhancement in battery performance (for both talk time and standby time), promising longer usage despite the same size battery and same speed processor under the hood.
In what hopefully will be a welcome addition, the Bold 9700 features a small trackpad in place of the trackball featured on the Bold 9000, and other recent models such as the Tour, Curve or Pearl. Although I haven't had the chance to try out the trackpad yet, I hold out hope it will offer some relief against the annoyingly constant scrolling needed to navigate long Web pages or documents on those trackball-equipped devices.
Unfortunately, it appears that RIM also taketh away, as the Bold 9700 abandons the 802.11a support that was so unique to the Bold 9000, settling instead for a more common 802.11b/g implementation. While the loss of the 5 GHz Wi-Fi radio probably won't be a big deal for many, I nonetheless find the subtraction disappointing given that the recently ratified 802.11n standard will certainly drive more enterprise Wi-Fi traffic into the 5 GHz band in the near future.
The Bold 9700 will ship with the long-awaited BlackBerry 5.0 OS, which promises to deliver enhancements to BlackBerry calendar capabilities and e-mail management when used in conjunction with a Blackberry Enterprise Server 5.0 implementation.
Responding quickly to the SMS-based vulnerability to the iPhone demonstrated this week at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas and first revealed earlier this month at a conference in Singapore, Apple released version 3.01 firmware for their fleet of mobile devices on Friday.
The vulnerability research, performed by Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner, demonstrated ways that an attacker could crash the connectivity or telephony subsystems of the iPhone through a series of invalid SMS messages, or even introduce exploit code to the device.
According to the limited information Apple provided about the fix, version 3.01 only addresses the SMS vulnerabilities and it apparently does not include other features or fixes at this time. Specifically, the Apple knowledgebase article says:
Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through iPhone OS 3.0
Impact: Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution
Description: A memory corruption issue exists in the decoding of SMS messages. Receiving a maliciously crafted SMS message may lead to an unexpected service interruption or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved error handling. Credit to Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators, and Collin Mulliner of Fraunhofer SIT for reporting this issue.
I've downloaded the new code via iTunes, finding the updated firmware (for the 3G and 3GS models) weighing in at 297.9 MB. After downloading, the install went smoothly and took about 10 minutes. In a quick scan around the device, I've yet to see any changes in the user interface other than an acknowledgment that the update was successful.
Given the potential severity of the SMS vulnerability now that the exploit has been discussed in a public forum, I would advise users and mobile administrators undertake the update as soon as possible. However, I feel that corporate administrators particularly will feel the pain of this update because of the lack of attention Apple has paid towards true enterprise management tools for the device.
While Apple has made some strides towards enterprise friendliness with version 2.0 of their profile tools - allowing administrators to push out certificates, usage policies, and VPN settings - Apple has done nothing to address remote firmware management on a device fleet.
Blackberry administrators can turn to their BES servers to deploy critical firmware updates. Android and WebOS administrators (however few of those there may be at this time) can expect the carrier to deliver patches (albeit in a staggered and somewhat unpredictable fashion). Windows Mobile and Symbian administrators can turn to 3rd party tools for the same functionality.
But iPhone administrators have to email all their users to tell them to do it themselves - presuming the users have access to iTunes and some decent bandwidth - or run a time-inefficient depot station and demand the users bring the devices in for immediate upgrade. Neither solution is effective for large deployments because neither ensures the work will get done.
Because we haven't yet seen any in-the-wild attacks on the SMS vulnerabilities, time to patch may not be critically important in this particular instance. But quite possibly in the near future, Apple will find themselves facing a critical vulnerability with a zero-day remote exploit in the wild, and they will find their delivery methods failing a most important segment of their customer base.
Like others, I've had the sneaking suspicion that the battery on my new iPhone 3GS was being consumed faster than I would suspect, given my level of usage day in and day out. My average morning usage would consist of a call or two, a few Web searches, a cursory e-mail check on three or four accounts, listening to a podcast or audiobook for an hour, and 20 minutes of gaming. By noon, I'd find the battery -- fully charged when I started -- would be hovering around 50 percent capacity.
When iPhone 2.0 came out, one of the first things I did was to disable e-mail push on days I didn't specifically need it. With that in mind, I took a few extra steps in battery management along the same lines.
First of all, I rechecked the e-mail push/fetch settings. After making sure that Push was turned off, I set "Fetch New Data" to Manual on the master control, also making sure each individual e-mail account was also set to manual in the Advanced screen.
Second, I turned off Push Notifications in the absence of anything trying to use it. On my iPhone at the moment, the only applications that support Push Notifications are the AIM instant messaging client and TapTap Revenge 2. Although I had individually disabled Push Notifications for each, I decided to also disable the master control as well -- since I'm not currently using the feature.
Lastly, I did a complete restore of the iPhone. When I got my 3GS a couple weeks ago, I did restored the settings, accounts and applications from my old iPhone 2G. In hindsight, this was a poor decision: The restore did not move a lot of data that I wanted to port to the new device (like Wi-Fi security passwords and application passwords) but may have brought some legacy bits with it that I don't want.
For instance, the complete restore and reconfiguration from scratch resolved some of the Bluetooth difficulties I wrote about in my review of the new device. Specifically, the BlueAnt Supertooth 3 speakerphone that wouldn't work with my 3GS suddenly worked fine.
As for battery performance since I made these modifications, it's only been two days but at first glance things have improved. On the first day, the normal amount of morning usage I described above left about 80 percent remaining capacity. Subsequently, I used the iPhone as normal throughout the rest of the day, did not charge my phone overnight, used it as normal on the morning of the second day -- and I now find myself with 46 percent remaining capacity.
A small sample size, to be sure, but so far so good.
There's a bunch of little tidbits that came out of my week with the Pre that didn't make it into the main Palm Pre review and slide show. Here are a few items of note:
Not a formal coverage test by any means, but I was able to listen to Pandora on the Pre with very good success. I made it all the way from downtown Oakland, Calif., to Milpitas (about 35 miles down Interstate 880) without a drop. It looks like when coverage drops from EvDO to 1xRTT, however, that Pandora -- or the Pre -- can't recover and the music dies.
Instant messaging is a bit of a problem on the Pre, as it can be a major battery hog. Since IM and SMS are both in the same Messaging application, IM won't turn off in the conventional manner. Closing the Messaging app by throwing it off the screen doesn't work -- it still runs in the background. Instead you have get into the Messaging app and click on Buddies and then your presence indicator in order to sign out.
Many may not know this, but Palm has released a small firmware upgrade since the launch, taking the device to 1.0.2. If it hasn't happened to your device yet, go to the Upgrade application and give it a shot. If on the WAN connection, you may have to try several times. Wi-Fi will be quicker.
Every now and then the device hangs, showing a blue sky background with a few clouds. To force a restart, hold down the power button and slide the ringer mute back and forth three or four times.
I'm hearing some reports of trouble with Exchange servers with a little extra security. I haven't noticed that myself, but I did not have a problem downloading attachments in one instance. I got some long error message for a couple hours, but it still worked over IMAP. I couldn't replicate the next day, but it is something to keep an eye on.
When coming out of BART tunnels or other such areas with poor to nonexistent coverage, the Pre will report that I am roaming and data is not supported. Users should keep an eye on the bill to make sure they aren't getting screwed by something there.
I didn't talk about the phone's sound quality. In a nutshell, decent from the handset but a little muddy. Understandable, by any means. Over the included wired headset or Bluetooth, it sounds just fine.
The Touchstone power block is sold as an accessory for $70. You have to swap out the stock back face plate for one with an extra power conductor that comes with the Touchstone. The stone is a little sloped so you can keep using the device while charging.
Didn't get a chance to try the Pre with iTunes before I sent it back but I did connect it to a PC. When connected, the user must choose -- media sync, USB drive mode or just charge. If in USB drive mode, you can't use the phone. A really draconian way of keeping you from tethering, and pretty stupid if you ask me. If anyone knows a legitimate technical reason for this, I'd love to hear it.
Anyone still hoping Newber will make it through Apple's maze of certification can kiss that hope goodbye and should now start longing for Google to open up subscriptions to Google Voice née GrandCentral soon instead.
From the e-mail just sent to beta users like myself:
"As you may be aware, Newber first applied for acceptance into the App Store on October 2nd, 2008. After more than five months awaiting approval, and despite both overwhelming response from the professional community and varied attempts to get any kind of response from Apple, Newber has not received a review. Not rejected, not accepted - limbo.
We are sad to say that for this reason FreedomVOICE has stopped development on Newber. For this reason we will be ending the extended Newber Beta Test on March 31st, 2009. We would like to give you the next few weeks as an opportunity to begin transfer of your Newber phone number to the carrier of your choice. If you are interested in doing so, simply contact your new carrier and follow their procedure for having a number transferred. Your new carrier may contact FreedomVOICE Technical Support at 1-800-477-1477 ext. 2 if they need to verify any information.
After March 31st, all remaining Newber Beta Test phone numbers will be canceled."
More depressing news about this can be found here.
update: Got the go-ahead to move from GrandCentral to Google Voice yesterday. More on my impressions of the new service coming soon.
In the run-up to Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 unveiling, I found myself less interested in the specific details of what would or would not come with the actual release, but rather in whether my first generation iPhone would be party to the new features at all.
I expected the worst, anticipating Apple try to force me into a hardware upgrade approximately two seconds after my existing service contract expired. Now I am well aware of the growing obsolescence of my iPhone - with its diminishing battery capacity and molasses slow EDGE data connection - so the new software seemed like a great opportunity to push cheapskates like me into some new hardware.
So I was pleasantly surprised when the news was not quite as dire as I expected.
While iPhone OS 3.0 will be available sometime this summer as a free download to all iPhone 3G users (under contract with a carrier, of course), as a "special bonus", Apple will also let users with Gen 1 hardware install the update for free as well. Due to hardware limitations, 1st generation iPhones would be absent some features though, namely MMS and stereo Bluetooth.
iPod Touch customers (of both hardware generations) can also gain access to the new software for $9.95.
I've been waiting with baited breath all week for Google to upgrade my GrandCentral account to the rebranded Google Voice service. Hopefully with this upgrade, GrandCentral will finally be usable given my particular set of needs and devices - only a full year after I first tried putting the service to work.
The other day, Microsoft invited me over for an early look at Window Mobile 6.5, the next iteration of the company's operating system for phones. I didn't get to actually use the OS, but from my brief time watching it in action, I garnered several first impressions.
I think it safe to say that people will like using Windows Mobile 6.5 more than previous iterations. On the down side, there remains a lot of work still to be done before the operating system is ready to ship (I would say a November release is more likely than July), and the focus of the OS has swung back toward end-user enhancements over the needs of corporate administrators.
First of all, the new icon-based Start Menu looks to be a significant improvement over the current menu-driven layout. The honeycomb shape of the touch zones leaves lots of room for finger-based manipulation of the screen -- perhaps too much. While I absolutely love the idea that I will no longer need a stylus to get around in WM, I found on-screen real estate is now not consumed efficiently and users may need to do a lot of scrolling to find the applications they want.
Unlike with the iPhone or Android user interfaces, Windows Mobile 6.5 scrolls top to bottom (rather than side to side). The vertical scroll presents the Start Menu as a long list, rather than a page turning, which required more manipulation than I felt was necessary. This may have been due to the overwhelming sluggishness of the scrolling function, which I was promised will be improved as the OS moves through the beta process. The user can manually customize the order of icons in the menu to put more frequently used applications at the top, but that process could probably use some intelligence to automatically move icons up as applications get used.
I really liked the new approach to showing the user time-sensitive details, even when the phone is locked. I could see the next calendar item without unlocking the interface, and I could directly access applications with a state change from the lock screen. For instance, if a new voice mail is detected, I could go directly from the lock screen to the voice mail application without having to interact with the main menu or home screen first.
Unfortunately, the Microsoft representatives would not show me a touch-screen keyboard -- in fact, I saw no typing at all during the demonstration. The unit I saw in action (an HTC Touch Diamond, I think) did not have a physical keyboard, and I was anxious to see if the new on-screen keyboard was finger-ready (as I truly hate the tiny stylus-oriented on-screen keyboard that usually comes with WM). Even though I specifically asked to see the keyboard, I was deflected off with the nebulous statement that the keyboard will be different depending on the device.
This lack of cooperation leads me to believe that nothing has changed to this point with the touch keyboard. Microsoft had no qualms about showing me other features that didn't yet work right, so why be coy with the keyboard?
WM 6.5 also brings an updated mobile browser with it, at long last bringing a full browser experience natively to Windows Mobile. Users have the choice of either the full Web experience (which includes built-in Flash support) or a more mobile-friendly iteration.
I definitely found the zoom controls more user-friendly than some of the competition. Users could bring up a slider on the right side of the screen to adjust the zoom, then use a finger to move the on-screen focus to the appropriate spot, keeping an eye on on-screen markers that indicate the relative position on the page. The feature is not as intuitive as the iPhone's pinch and spread gestures, but much easier to use than the zoom on RIM's latest BlackBerrys.
Interestingly, the Microsoft representative told me that the browser in WM 6.5 is based on Internet Explorer 6, because that browser was still the most commonly used (and developed for) in the world. To my ears, that claim sounded out-of-date. I took a quick look at the browser utilization rates over the last year for eweek.com, and indeed found IE 6 was runner up to IE 7 (and third, also behind Firefox 3.0 for 2009). I'm no expert on Web development, but it sounds like the WM 6.5 browser may already be a little creaky from old age.
The Microsoft folks also showed me a demo of Recite, the early-stage voice recording and search feature. Although the feature sounds like total winner -- record a voice message and then search for it later with just a keyword -- I got the sense during the meeting that there was a pretty decent chance that Recite would not be in the official 6.5 release. The demo itself was pretty much a disaster, as only one out of four attempts identified the intended message.
We talked a bit about the My Phone synchronization service. First of all, calling My Phone a synchronization service is somewhat disingenuous, since the phone only connects once a day in the middle of the night. Let's just call it a daily backup -- a one-time full backup with ongoing incremental updates. Fortunately, from the screens I saw during the demo, it looks like My Phone will be usable for more than documents, contacts and calendars, as users should be able to back up some media (photos) as well. Ring tones will not be backed up.
The mobile administrator in me got hung up on the utility of My Phone in a business setting. For regulatory purposes, administrators need to be able to account for sensitive information wherever it may be. But My Phone really runs the risk of letting corporate documents out into the wild. Let's say a user downloads an e-mail attachment to the mobile phone, and then the attachment gets backed up to My Phone. Suddenly, this document has replicated to another service altogether, where it is accessible from other devices and PCs and out of corporate control.
When I asked about how administrators could stop this from occurring, I didn't get the sense this was a high priority for Microsoft at this time. Administrators could probably bar the user from replicating documents to My Phone altogether via policy, but perhaps not limit the synchronization to only certain stores or storage devices.
Let's just say I have some fear that in its zeal to replicate and expand beyond some of the appealing features that draw users to Apple or Google devices, Microsoft is giving short shrift to one of the largest segments of its existing customer base -- corporations. While Windows Mobile 6.1 was all about enhancing the mobile OS for corporate use and management, the newest version has swung back the other way to attract consumers and business end users, apparently without expanding the administrator's control over or visibility into how these new features behave.
In fall 2008 at CTIA, or more specifically at one of the satellite shows, I met with representatives of a company called Newber. They were writing an application for the iPhone. A little like GrandCentral, Newber provides users with a VOIP phone number, and the application redistributes calls received by that number to whatever number you want, such as to a land line or an iPhone.
I participated in the beta for the software, liking it on the whole when compared with GrandCentral, but not enough to pay the monthly fee once the software and service got approval from Apple's App Store.
Back in November, I got notice that the beta was officially ending, but we testers could keep using it until the App Store launch. I uninstalled the beta and moved on, figuring I would blog a little about it once it officially launched.
Today, it occurred to me that I hadn't heard anything about the software for a long time. Checking Newber's site, I learned why: It still has not been approved, 125 days and counting.
Check out the little ticker on Newber's homepage that counts out its pain, day by day.
The good news is that Newber now has a BlackBerry beta in the hopper too. If the company's lucky, RIM's App Store validation will not be nearly as onerous.
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