Ding Dong WiMax Is Dead

Last night I listened to a fascinating panel discussion, presented as part of the monthly dinner program hosted by the New Jersey Chapter of SIM. On the panel were three representatives of the vendor community and one practitioner.

• Bob Egan - Vice President, Mobile Strategy, Mobiquity, Inc.
• Vinod Kachroo - Senior Information Technology Executive
• Chuck Sacco - President of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic, Vice President of Client Strategy at Movitas and Adjunct Faculty at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business.
• Dean Guida - President and CEO - Infragistics

The panel was moderated by JP Finnell,  Head of Mobile Strategy, SAP America Services. Under his direction, they covered a lot of ground in the mobility space but one comment in particular really struck home with me.

Many months ago I wrote a brief piece about the impending death of WiMax, the first broadly available high speed cellular wireless system. Only a year or so before, I was thrilled to have obtained a so-called 4G Sprint phone that supported WiMax. This meant my smart phone would be several times faster when it sent or received data over the WiMax network. It had little to no impact on voice service, but email or any internet related activity would be considerably faster.

Service was only available in a handful of major cities at first. Traveling in these cities, my phone delivered fantastic performance. I couldn't wait until service was available in more cities and in my area. I remember the week I showed up to my office and saw the little 4G symbol light up. Super high speed internet to my phone while sitting in the office.

At fist, Sprint was way ahead, expanding WiMax into lots of new markets. Then, there was a deal with Clearwire Communications who were going to build out a huge WiMax infrastructure. Through a joint agreement, Sprint users would soon gain access to WiMax service across the nation.

The wheels came loose when Clearwire ran into some difficulties obtaining additional bandwidth due to concerns over interference with the GPS systems. But they came off altogether when the world converged on LTE, a competitor to WiMax. AT&T, Verizon and T_Mobile, the major payers in the US all adopted the LTE standard. Moreover, with its partner, Clearwater, having difficulties, even Sprint began introducing new devices with LTE in lieu of WiMax.

These signs lead me to believe, and subsequently write, that WiMax was on its way out.

Last night, the floor opened for questions and, being the quiet and shy individual that I am, my hand went up immediately. The panel had discussed the latest devices, user interface designs and applications. But we are still limited by coverage and bandwidth, I pointed out. How do we deal with that?

Most of the response had to do with disconnected or standalone processing, store and forward logic, and tight designs that minimize traffic and therefore limit bandwidth needed. But the first statement was made by John Egan, a well know and highly respected industry veteran. He simply said, "WiMax is dead."  It's what I had predicted months ago. Even if it was old news to some people in the room, for me it was confirmation.

That was a good enough response for me.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Not Another iPad3 Review

That's right. This is not another iPad3 review. Since everyone and their brother is busy covering the much anticipated releases of the iPad3 I thought I would avoid that topic and seek some other, more pleasant diversion. You see, I have an iPad2. For the longest time I lusted after one badly. I wanted it so that I could have the tablet experience just like everyone else.

Then, as you may recall, on the luckiest day last year I actually won one as a door prize. It has been terrific and it does everything I need it to do. Now, I am sure the iPad3 will have all kinds of sexy new capabilities including a bigger screen, better camera, more memory, faster connectivity (LTE) and so on.  But, frankly, I don't really need any of that. I'm happy to stick with my iPad2.

Fortuitously, a post about music, my other passion in life, just happened to come across my screen.  I took the opportunity  to try purchasing music using the new Google Play service. One of my fellow plussers, Frank Garufi Jr. shared Ryan Van Sickle's announcement that his album Ghosts Of The Brokenhearted was now available for purchase on Google Play. Having met and heard Ryan in person I knew this would be a set of tracks I would enjoy. So what better way to test this new service one day after its launch?

Click. Click. Click. Okay, I own the album. Couldn't be easier. My stored credit card was used. There was no delay, no shipping, loading or ripping needed. The entire album was instantly available to me on any of my devices. As an extra added bonus Google Play lets you "share" or announce that you have bought the album on the Google Plus stream. When you share, you give everyone who has circled you one free play of the album. Share public and even people who have not circled you are entitled to sample the songs.

Brilliant. Not only do I get a bargain and the ability to play this album or any track it contains, but I can allow all those people who follow me on Google Plus to listen to it as well. For any music buff, this is a great way to grow your following. Word gets around that you throw a free play of an entire album once in a while, people will be enticed to circle you.

From the artist's perspective, this is free publicity. Exposure of the best kind. Whether you sample one track or play the whole album you are one tiny click from buying it. We all know about impulse purchases.

There is a lot more to explore in Google Play and if I encounter any other extraordinary features I'll be sure to let you know. In the meanwhile, I'll be sitting back and listening to some hard driving tunes on my iPad2.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

Sirius-ly True

For months Apple has been running commercials on network television showcasing the coolest feature of the iPhone 4s , the electronic assistant Siri.

There are many different little vignettes. In one, a woman asks, "What does my day look like," and Siri responds "Not bad. only two meetings today." Can I walk to the Belvedere Hotel from here? Siri displays a map and says, "Here are directions to the Belvedere Hotel." Walking briskly, a man says read me that text and Siri promptly tells who its from and reads the message. A little boy peers through a window and asks if it is going to snow today. Siri responds by saying, "It sure looks like snow today."

A female jogger says, "Remind me to call Chris when I get home." A busy executive says, "Move my meeting from three to four." Several more people make requests ending with a woman who says, "I'm locked out." Siri replies, "I found three locksmiths fairly close to you."

A man asks for directions to Santa Cruz, and a woman says, "Where are we?" In each case Siri responds with directions and a map showing the route and current location. What does Orion look like? Siri says I found this for you and displays an illustration of the constellation.

"Tell Julie and Kate our band is playing at the garage tonight." says the teen. Help me find the chords to a song. Call me a rock god, he says and Siri replie, "From now on I will call you a rock god, okay?"

I watched these various commercials over and over, and then it struck me. Did Siri really respond exactly the way the commercials portrayed?  While I have successfully instructed Siri to add reminders to my calendar and to text "my wife," I wondered if they were perhaps taking some liberties and making Siri appear a little smarter, more cute and friendlier than she really was? We know there is supposed to be truth in advertising but then we also know a certain amount of puffery is generally acceptable.

Not everyone has an iPhone 4s. Who would ever know? Fortunately, I do and so I decided to mirror the commercials exactly and compare the results I got to the results they showed. It took a few attempts but I managed to replicate just about every one. I listened and repeated the exact phrase and I am happy to report in every case Siri did, in fact, deliver the same result to me as it did to the person in the commercial.

On balance I have found Siri to be very useful and have had few problems as long as I have a good network connection. The early traffic issues seem to have cleared up.

Oh, and don't worry. Siri doesn't still call me "rock god." I changed that back to "sweetie pie."

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC

iPhone 4S Impressions

As you all know I made the leap from Android to the iPhone recently. It was a bit of a shock as I was a long time advocate of the Blackberry until Android came on the scene which prompted a change in allegiance and a two year love affair with HTC brand devices and 4G network data speeds.

After several weeks of daily use I have a few observations about the iPhone, none of which will surprise you very much.

If you recall, there were two main reasons for making the change. One was to explore Siri, the much touted virtual assistant who will learn and attend to your every need. The other was to explore the integration with current models of BMW automobiles.

Siri has turned out to be a fun and occasionally useful feature. Sending a text to my wife and finding the nearest Satrbucks location are the two most frequent practical tasks Siri handles for me. Almost every other request has been a demonstration of how Siri works, some of which have been a bust yielding bad or no results. Frequently we are out of network service either because of location or capacity issues on the server side. Moreover, I find Siri cannot handle complex questions and often presents the results in the form of a web search. Clearly Watson has nothing to fear.

The experience with integration to my 328i is another story. This is a truly simple and seamless connection which enables you to perform all kinds of functions on the iPhone using the iDrive control (that fat joystick on the center console which has three motions; tilt, rotate and depress.)

Of course through blue tooth you have complete control over the phone. Moreover, the address book automatically and dynamically synchronizes to the directory in the car. You can choose to use the music library on you iPhone as a source, selecting by song, album and so on.

With the special software feature called BMW Apps, you can also call up your calendar, Facebook and Twitter -- while parked, of course. You can even have Facebook posts or Tweets read out loud to you.  A selection of predefined Tweets are available to be sent out. BMW Connect also enables you to tune in Internet radio stations from iDrive offering even more audio entertainment sources for the vehicle.

When disconnected the application retains certain information such as fuel, range and distance traveled. Last mile is an extension of the guidance system which allows you to find your ultimate destination on foot after leaving the car. It will also guide you back to the car.

The only complaint I have about BMW Connect is the need to manually start it after plugging the phone into the car. It's not clear to me why the iPhone cannot be made to recognize this connection and engage the application  automatically. Moreover, once engaged, the application owns the iPhone and precludes the execution of other applications without first disengaging. Again, one should not be playing Words with Friends while driving (or boarding a plane) so this point may be moot.

The iPhone has delivered a few other pleasant surprises. It actually handles multiple sources of email and calendar entries better than Android did. While Android clearly integrated extremely well with all of the Google applications, it did not do as good a job handing Microsoft mail or other services I used. So far I have not found an application that I had before or wanted that is not available on the iPhone.

All my favorites including Tweetdeck, Foursquare and Google Plus are there and work well. The camera takes wonderful pictures and video. I can pay for my grande vanilla latte and we even have the ability with Facetime to make video calls to other iPhones.

Battery life, despite reports to the contrary, has not been a problem and performance on the 3G network has been fine. Screen real estate is limited but acceptable.

Having the same interface, applications and performance with WiFi connectivity on a device with a bigger screen would be great. Guess I better get on to testing this iPad thing next.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC