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.
With the long-awaited 802.11n standard finally ratified earlier this month, I had expected to see an outpouring of marketing from all the enterprise wireless LAN companies touting the long-awaited announcement. However, as I polled the various companies over the last few weeks, I instead found that most companies were more interested in talking about their newer technology enhancements (whether those pertained to vulnerability testing, perimeter enforcement or service-level optimization) instead of focusing on the ratification of the standard and the large wealth of customers waiting to upgrade that is speculated to be out there waiting for the ratification to finally happen.
Indeed the feeling I got time and again from these companies was, with the WiFi Alliance announcing a few months ago that the ratified standard would be compatible with their Draft 2.0 certification process, that the barriers to adoption were already out of the way and that customers had nothing to worry about in this regard. While this sentiment is technically correct, I nonetheless was surprised to not see each and every wireless company trumpeting the event and hawking their wares.
Well, Aruba Networks made the first big move today (Meru's Cash for Clunkers promotion aside), announcing new hardware and some extremely aggressive pricing. In Aruba's estimation, the two biggest barriers to adoption they were seeing from prospective clients were: 1) implementers were waiting for ratification of the standard, and 2) buyers found the cost of entry too high. With the first concern now abated, Aruba's announcement takes square aim at the latter, firing the first volley in what I expect will be a long, steep, and beneficial (for the customer) price war.
First of all, Aruba announced a new access point - the AP-105. Priced at only $695, the AP-105 features 2 by 2 MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), two radios (one locked to 5GHz band, the other 2.4GHz and 5GHZ capable), and a single Gigabit Ethernet port. Designed to be unobtrusive, the AP105 only offers internal antennae (no external connectors).
Like their existing lines of access points, the new AP-105 will work with all existing Aruba controllers running recent or current software revisions. Also like the other APs, customers can unlock additional features via licensing - features like mesh networking, intrusion detection sensor capabilities or remote access point secure tunneling.
In the second part of the announcement, Aruba also announced a price drop on the highest-end models of their current line of 802.11n access points - the AP-124 and AP-125. Previously priced at $1,295, these access points can now be purchased for $995 apiece. These high-end access points again feature dual radios, but with a 3 by 3 MIMO design, external antennae connectors (on the AP-124) and dual Gigabit Ethernet ports.
The AP124 and AP125 are currently FIPS 140-2 certified, and Aruba has also submitted the AP-105 for certification, although they anticipate the process may take anywhere from three to 12 months.
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 20 tech-related things, facts, habits or ideas about yourself. At the end, you will tag no one, since you should have forsworn chain letters years ago. However, if you want to share your tech idiosyncrasies, you can reach me at agarcia@eweek.com or leave a comment below.
1. Come July, I will probably ditch my iPhone. Not because of the device itself, but because AT&T's network gives lousy coverage in my house, in my office and along my commute route--even though I live in the heart of technology country. Those 4,490 available rollover minutes say it all.
2. I used to be a zealous advocate of building one's own PC. Now it seems like a lot of trouble, and maybe not such a great way to save money.
3. I built a telephone conference server to use at work out of old PCs, open-source software and a bunch of analog lines off our corporate PBX. The building and testing were infinitely more interesting than the meetings.
4. At home, I've been steadily digitizing all my media, mostly because I hate all the shelf space it takes up. I still can't cut the cord to physical media, though, as I like having it around. This is an annoying conundrum for me.
5. I am as baffled as anyone by Microsoft's phalanx of Windows 7 versions. I'd prefer to see two versions--Home and Corporate--with software add-on packs (for media, security and management). Unfortunately, I suspect this would make things harder for everyone somehow.
6. Despite my years of experience with wireless technology, I still can't make 1080p video stream consistently well without throwing thousands of dollars at the cause.
7. I hate running anti-virus software, and until last year, I never did on my personal systems. The rise of drive-by Web threats secreted on normally trusted sites really freaks me out, though.
8. I use Windows XP, Vista, Seven and CentOS Linux on a regular basis. None of them have changed my life. Perspective, people.
9. I pretty much never back up my personal data.
10. I got my start in IT because I kept accidentally cracking into a Unix server at work. I like to think the IT director saw something in me, but really, I think she just wanted to keep an eye on me.
11. During my first server crisis as an IT staffer, I spent the night on the floor next to the server with a bunch of manuals and Chinese food. The next morning, when everything was working properly, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I could do this for a living. The problem was something like, "Novell 3.12, when running on a server with an EISA bus, loads all memory-resident programs under 640K, no matter how much memory you have." Adding the OS2 namespace had pushed me over the limit. Or something like that--it's kind of a blur now.
12. My first PC was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a, the second an IBM PC Jr. To keep my parents from using the systems, I wrote an authentication program that, when wrong credentials were entered, would match the onscreen text color to the background, then reboot the machine.
13. I got my first e-mail account in 1991, accessing it using Pine. Seven years later, when they forced everyone on the server to start using POP3, I lost interest in that account.
14. I find helping someone buy a smartphone is much harder than helping them choose a PC. It's simply too personal a preference to impose your will on. I ask three questions: "What carrier do you want to use?" "Can you type on a touch-screen?" "What three things do you want most to do with it?" I point in the right direction, then I get out of the way.
15. My personal domain name is an obscure Simpsons reference. It's not as cool as it once was. Or, it was never cool.
16. I use many VOIP services--mostly Skype,GrandCentral and Raketu. I still have a land line, although I never use it.
17. I loved the hands-on expertise and great customer service of my old DSL ISP, but I love even more the lower price and fast pipes provided by the local cable conglomerate. This makes me very sad.
18. While I suspect that I could easily replace my cable subscription with over-the-air HD, Netflix Watch Now, Hulu and Amazon.com services, I am not quite ready to make that leap.
19. On many occasions, I have stood in a Best Buy or Fry's looking for geek inspiration. More often than not, I will pull out my iPhone and order whatever inspires me online (usually at Amazon.com) while still standing in the store.
20. I think everyone should learn how to do bare-metal virtualization. Find instructions online on how to load VMware's ESXi on a USB stick, plug it into a computer with a lot of RAM and give it a shot. It will be worth the effort. Bonus points if you make an iSCSI server to use with it.
Following up on Scott Ferguson's story on Cisco Systems' new enterprise Aironet 1140 802.11n access point from a few weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with Cisco's senior manager of Mobility Solutions, Chris Kozup, about the new product line.
For me, the most interesting technology improvement with the Aironet 1140 is ClientLink, Cisco's take on beamforming. With beamforming, an optional component of the still-in-progress 802.11n standard, the AP will focus its antennas on a particular client to improve signal gain and performance.
With the Aironet 1140, Cisco implements beamforming in hardware, as Cisco developed new silicon for the task. Kozup claims that doing beamforming in silicon allows Cisco to focus the strength of the beam on a per packet basis, allowing the hardware to quickly and effectively switch focus between multiple clients attached to the same AP, even while using the same 2x3 transmit/receive chain and omnidirectional antennas.
The only other beamforming solution I've seen to date comes from Ruckus Wireless, which for several years has practiced beamforming techniques in software -- first with its 802.11g and then with its 802.11n APs -- directing the signal to clients via a specially designed array of direction antennas.
For Ruckus' take on the drawbacks of Cisco's hardware approach, look here.
Also of note from my chat with Kozup was Cisco's zeal for making it as easy as possible for existing Cisco Aironet customers to upgrade to 802.11n technology and the Aironet 1140.
First of all, the new AP promises to work with existing 802.3af POE (power over Ethernet), providing two full performance streams (two transmit x three receive) and dual-band support at less than 12.95 watts of power. So customers won't need to rip out their existing POE switches to deploy (noncrippled) 802.11n.
Cisco wants to take the simple upgrade a step further. Kozup also informed me that the Aironet 1140 was designed to fit in the same mounting brackets as legacy 802.11b Aironet APs, so wireless administrators only need to swap in the new AP in place of the old.
Implicit in this deployment scenario, however, is that Cisco intends to deliver these new APs as one-to-one replacements for the old 802.11g. The good news is that Cisco therefore promises no new site surveys are needed for deployment, but, on the other hand, customers will not necessarily see the benefits they expect from the increased range afforded by the new wireless standard.
When I questioned Kozup about this strategy, he emphasized that wireless implementers now need to focus their deployments on performance and not just coverage. Given that new generation wireless networks are now used for much more than simple e-mail and Web surfing, and are much more likely to carry a host of applications (including voice and possibly video), deploying a network simply to maximize coverage will not reap the full value of the network.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Palm finally pulled back the curtains on the Palm Pre--the first device based on the long-awaited, oft-delayed WebOS mobile operating system, previously known as "Nova."
Although early demonstrations indicate the platform is well designed and very slick, I think Palm's latest release may be too little, too late to save the company because of the interplay between the economy and Palm's tarnished reputation.
Over the last 20 months, Palm has surely looked on in envy as Apple and Google enjoyed tremendous early success with brand-new devices running highly anticipated mobile OSes, with thousands of people lining up (or pre-ordering) so they could be the first to have an iPhone or Android phone. Palm would love similar fanfare and quick adoption of WebOS and the Pre.
Both the iPhone and the Android phone came with built-in core audiences to drive initial sales--Apple's Mac aficionados and Android's open-source advocates and developers. Palm once had a strong consumer and business following, but the former dried up after suffering through years of quirky device behavior and stagnation of both the underlying platform and the developer community. Meanwhile, Palm consigned the latter to devices running Windows Mobile.
In December 2008, Palm representatives told BusinessWeek that the new OS is designed to reach the "fat middle of the market"--somewhere between the iPhone and the more business-oriented RIM BlackBerrys or Palm's Windows Mobile Treos. The hope--and design intent--is for WebOS to appeal to consumers who will then bring in into the office and use it for work as much as possible.
To win these customers, Palm will need to overcome its recent reputation for producing uninspiring and under-featured devices. Palm of course will need scores of positive reviews in blogs and the mainstream press, but what it really needs is to get the device into the hands of those who once knew, loved and trusted their Treos or PDAs, in hopes of winning those people over once again. Once in hand, the Pre has a few minutes to quickly prove that it can compete with the state-of-the-art alternatives--on native features, usability, the promise of future growth, utility and customization--before the customer says, "Screw it, I'm getting a BlackBerry."
This is a tall order, but WebOS does look compelling enough to succeed if given a chance.
Unfortunately, Palm will release WebOS devices into a terrible economy that will likely preclude any chance for the new platform to succeed, not only due to the massive slowdown in spending by consumers, but through a decrease in the number of places potentially interested customers can turn to give Palm this one last chance.
Following a historically bad holiday shopping season, many financial analysts predict 2009 will continue the downturn for retail establishments. Potentially, hundreds of thousands of U.S.-based stores (and thousands of malls) could be forced to close this year, reducing the number of places consumers can get hands-on with the Palm Pre. Sprint, the exclusive carrier for the Pre when it launches in the first half of 2009, has already shuttered many of its existing outlets and reemphasized its online store presence--an example I expect other carriers to follow as the recession progresses.
Were these potential showcase outlets to disappear--to go along with the in-progress demise of electronics retailer Circuit City--Palm will suddenly have many fewer locations where it can let curious but cautious users sample the new wares.
To reach the fat middle, Palm will definitely need to expand its presence in remaining retail alternatives that cater to this particular audience and are sources of cell phones and smartphones. Wal-Mart springs immediately to mind, as Palm already has some presence there with its low-end, low-margin Centro, and customers know that higher-end devices like the iPhone can be bought there. Other options such as office supply stores would also make sense, although the economy will surely take a toll on that retail sector as well in 2009.
If the Pre does not move as hoped out of the gate, Palm may need to massively discount the device and look to generate income primarily through application sales via the Palm online store. But Palm would need to convince developers to focus their efforts on a late-arriving operating system with no existing customer base. This is a tough proposition, although at least Palm had the foresight to base development upon standards, as applications can be developed quickly with known entities like CSS, HTML and JavaScript.
"I just need AT&T to lower the service fees a little bit."
"Don't count on it."
While these words could have been shared between any two people with a cell phone and a healthy suspicion of their cell phone operators, this lighthearted exchange actually took place in December between Doug Garland, vice president of product management at Google, and AT&T President of Emerging Devices Glen Lurie during a panel discussion on how Silicon Valley can make money from broadband and mobility.
That was the first Monday after the much ballyhooed launch of the original iPhone. On that day, the AT&T network, flush with thousands of new data users on the EDGE network, crashed hard. This left many of the happy new iPhone users—and lots of non-iPhone users—stranded without data access for the bulk of the day. Why the outage happened is up for debate, but the fact of the matter is, there was a significant outage.
Now, the news is out that T-Mobile has taken preorders for 1.5 million units of its G1 with Google smart phone, which is replete with connectivity on the carrier's nascent HSDPA network.
I'm guessing there is hardly any traffic on the carrier's 3G network at the moment, as T-Mobile only has six 3G phones available for sale right now and the traffic from unlocked phones like the Nokia E71 or Palm's Treo Pro has to be fairly negligible. Accordingly, I didn't experience any 3G problems during my tests of the new Android phone, but a causal glance at other reviews today indicates other reviewers weren't so fortunate. So the network's reach and stability are already in question.
We don't know how many of the preordered units (if it is really close to 1.5 million after all) will be delivered to markets in which T-Mobile has deployed 3G, since the network is only available in 20 or so markets right now. But Oct. 23—the day after everyone who ordered early will receive their G1—will be Super Bowl flush day for the T-Mobile network.
And I wouldn't be surprised if T-Mobile's network slows to a crawl, then rolls over and dies that day.
Of course, frequent Google users should be well-used to Google services getting beta tested out in the wild.
In an effort to resolve the mystery surrounding the poor talk time performance of the Treo Pro smart phone I've been reviewing, Palm sent me a second unit that was waiting for me when I returned from my recent vacation. While I was able to prove that the GSM radio works properly in this second device, I still found the Treo Pro provided terrible talk times when connected at 3G speeds.
Once again, I could only squeeze out about 2 hours and 40 minutes of talk time when connected at the faster rate on the AT&T network -- significantly below the 5-hour rating Palm claims for the device in its specification sheets. And this time measurement occurred with the phone set to autoconnect to the best available network -- not forced to 3G. (By way of comparison, the Nokia E71 got about 4.5 hours when forced to 3G and over 12 hours when set to autoconnect.)
Understandably, Palm's representatives are more than a bit concerned about my findings. They said Palm would never release a phone with battery performance that poor into today's marketplace. They also claim (and some cursory online research seems to confirm) that no other reviewers have experienced performance this poor. Yet I've seen it on two Treo Pros now.
To try and figure out if the performance was related to something in particular with the AT&T network or the cell around eWEEK's San Francisco offices, Palm sent out an engineering team last week to scan the environment and run its own tests on the network.
I haven't gotten the full report on their findings (and probably won't for a couple more days), but early indications are that the Palm engineers also experienced unusually high battery consumption when performing tests in the lobby of our building -- but not when testing from the sidewalk right outside. Unfortunately, the team did not come up to our 9th floor offices to get a full measure of the network conditions where I conduct each and every battery test we perform.
With the Treo Pro available for sale from the Palm Web site as an unlocked device (as of Friday, Sept. 26), perhaps we will start to see word soon as to whether users are experiencing results similar to what I'm seeing. In the meantime, I will continue to wait for Palm's findings.
One way or another, however, the review will be online later this week.
I had been hoping to get eWEEK's review of Palm's new Treo Pro smart phone online this week, but testing took an unfortunate right turn, leading us to return the device and wait for a replacement before we could finish the tests. Although I am bummed about the delay, I had a lot fun troubleshooting the issues -- even though I didn't come to a satisfactory conclusion as to what the real problem was.
In a nutshell, the device was getting pretty terrible battery performance on eWEEK Labs' talk time tests -- almost half of what I expected given Palm's published specifications. In my first talk time test, with the radio set to auto-select the best network, the battery only lasted about 2.5 hours, while the specs claimed 5 hours. According to the device indicators, the call was placed over the 3G network. Although the 2.5 hours would be an absolutely terrible result for a 2G phone, it still is poor compared with the 3G results we've seen recently from the iPhone 3G or the Nokia E71.
I didn't think the problem was caused by background applications eating up CPU time because I had done a hard reset on the phone right before testing. Any background services running after that I felt were fair game, since they are automatically loaded on a freshly restored device. The restore also disabled the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios. And I didn't think it was the battery, either, since I'd used the device over Wi-Fi plenty in the preceding days, without noticing anything out of the ordinary.
To ensure the battery wasn't draining because the phone was thrashing between 2G and 3G networks, I forced the connection to 3G and tried again. And again, the battery died after 2.5 hours.
Confused and looking for answers, I enlisted Palm's help for troubleshooting at this point. After I explained the tests and everything I had tried in an attempt to resolve the problems (and what I was seeing from Palm's competitors in identical tests, to boot), the company told me that the AT&T network wants to give priority to the 3G network. When faced with a strong 2G signal and a somewhat weak 3G signal as reported by the device, the network nonetheless commands the handset to utilize 3G -- unless the device is manually forced the other way or the 3G signal drops below some unstated threshold. Since Palm's device gets really good reception (the company's claim), it would almost certainly stick to the 3G network better than other devices would, and that extra love to the 3G network would mean worse overall battery performance.
Palm also told me some information that contradicts its claims about AT&T's network a bit -- telling me that not all SIMs are created equal, as some may default home to a 2G network over a 3G (or vice versa). And then I was asked to try the test using the SIM used in the Nokia test. (Note: eWEEK Labs does not have testing accounts with the various GSM-based operators. Instead, we test using the SIM sent to us with the phone.)
Something still didn't seem right with these arguments, since ultimately the Treo Pro's 3G numbers were still pretty poor. Figuring Nokia's PR firm wouldn't be wild about me testing another product on its dime, I tried something else to see if the battery was the culprit. I tried the talk time test again, this time forcing the radio to 2G, figuring that if the result was in the same ballpark, it had to be the battery.
Instead, I found there was something very wrong with the 2G radio. The phone would report an EDGE connection and show the received signal -- four bars in the place I conduct the tests -- but no traffic would actually pass to or from the device. I couldn't place a call, nor could I receive one. No dial tone, no ringing -- nothing. Just to make sure there wasn't a problem with the local cell, I grabbed my gen 1 iPhone and made a call, then downloaded an application from the App Store. I tried placing a call with the Treo Pro again -- nothing.
Not a cell problem, apparently.
I'm guessing there are a bunch of problems with our test unit, and perhaps what I've seen -- the bad talk time performance and the lying 2G indicator -- are just symptoms. The radio problem would not explain the bad battery performance on the test where I forced the connection to 3G. I could see a comatose 2G radio causing the problem when the radio is set to auto-select -- there would be thrashing because the signal detected does not equal the actual traffic that gets through -- but the 3G test was just as bad and there shouldn't be any thrashing in this case.
I guess I will never know what the real problem is. Ultimately, there's something wrong with the phone, and I need to get a review done. Palm is sending another one, and we'll get the review online as soon as we can.
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