Tech IT Easy » VoIP

Is Apple’s FaceTime (meant to be) Disruptive?

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 14:22:39 +0000

Note from Vincent: Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates on this blog. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m very preoccupied with other things (that actually make me money) and really, really miss blogging on Techiteasy.org. If perchance, a random reader thinks he can blog at least 1-7x per week on business, tech, and other coolities, please don’t hesitate to contact me on techiteasyblog at the Google mail dot com. For now, please enjoy a brainstorm with myself in a written form.

Before engaging on a rant about FaceTime and whether it’s great or terrible, let’s get one thing straight: what kind of bandwdith does FaceTime on iPhone consume and what kind of bandwidth is currently supported on the 3G network? The reason being that I think a lack of 3G-support is a real handicap to this whole mobile (!) application, as you can easily find out if a friend tries to Face Time call you while on the road.

A Google-search revealed that FaceTime’s actual bandwidth people are measuring is 100 Kbps to 392 Kbps and an AT&T 3G cell has 7 Mbps of total capacity (source), while T-Mobile in the Netherlands (my country) has a reported capacity of 2048/384 kbps (source), which I assume is representative of some, but not all countries in Europe. So, in theory, FaceTime should work over 3G and I can also report that watching the last keynote live over 3G on my iPhone was impeccable, which should say something.

So if FaceTime over 3G will work fine and looking at how Apple is releasing this technology incrementally, 1st to iPhone, then to Mac, then it can be assumed that we ain’t seen nothing yet and Apple will either/or release FaceTime to PCs as well, open the API to Skype et al, and mobile providers will eventually allow it to transmit over their networks.

As to the question of whether it is disruptive, I can only comment on some features that I think are pretty cool and some that are questionable.

What’s cool?! The second camera: One cool feature is the ability to use the iPhone as a demo-machine. I had a Face-to-Face call with a good friend of mine in Brazil in order to show him our product and how it is developing. We build hardware and try to be stealthy about it, so I prefer the one-to-one call, vs. something more public. So what we did was for him to call me from his Mac on my phone and for me to walk him around our workshop, essentially give a presentation, while showing our tech on the back-camera. And that was… awesome! Now, Apple did advertise FaceTime as a way to show off your babies, which is what I was doing, but I don’t know if this is really a killer-feature that is convincing for everyone. But I can imagine a reporter going to an event and getting a sound-byte from Steve Jobs as pretty cool as well.

What’s bad?! Your nostril-hair: I think that the ergonomics of the iPhone camera are not optimal. Basically, anyone with a fat chin or hairy nostrils will probably be self-conscious to the camera seemingly focussing on these parts of their anatomy. I tried holding it higher and further away from my face, but just like a touch-screen iMac would be super-tiring on the arms, so is such a posture.

What’s controversial?! Instant on: Unlike Skype on your PC or phone, FaceTime does not have to be running all the time, or if it is, you don’t notice it. So people who know my mail-address can actually call me, FaceTime will start (with some delay, I should note) and I can either accept or deny the call. If I deny it, my iPhone tells me that the recipient is not available for FaceTime, which is diplomatic enough. But still, being so used to having Skype off, if I don’t want to be disturbed, I’m not sure how I feel about FaceTime intruding into my space like that. At the same time, always being reachable is a telephone thing, which also has its plus-sides.

What’s bad?! Connectivity-issues: My call to Brazil wasn’t flawless and this is over WiFi. I especially noticed problems when I moved around, which would cost more bandwidth, I guess. This brings me to my next point.

What’s bad?! No backchannel: If a Skype-call fails, I type a message to let my contact know about it. No such thing with FaceTime, and it’s also somewhat surprising that they didn’t make a link between iChat & the FaceTime app on the Mac. A little bird did tell me that that would prevent Apple from releasing FaceTime on Windows, where it would be easier to do so as a separate app. But back to the backchannel, there are two features I would like:

A way to leave a voicemail if I don’t reach someone via FaceTime. This will happen a lot if the recipient is on 3G.
A chat-client that isn’t paid sms & works on both the Mac & the phone.

It’s early days yet, but my sense is that this a pretty cool technology meant mostly for buying more Apple-devices. Now, speculating what could be the next steps for FaceTime, there are several:

Worst-case: it could remain as is and I think that at the very least the lack of 3G and the lack of any kind of back-channel are a problem.
Medium-case: Apple will improve the FaceTime app & allow it to run on 3G. This would be a very big deal already.
Best-case: Apple will open up the API to other programs. Since this is what was originally announced and VOIP is only a threat to mobile operators and not to Apple, I expect this to happen in any case.

But is it disruptive? Only if you consider mobile video-calling disruptive. It certainly is, if you watched Star Trek in the 90s like I did and consider this a next step towards teleportation & exploring other planets. I’s also pretty interesting for live-newscasting (over 3G!). It isn’t, if you or your significant other suffers from excessive nostril-hair.

With Skype, I can now talk to myself. and mom.

Georgia Psyllidou — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:14:15 +0000

Yesterday evening I was cheerfully chatting with a friend, arranging meeting-up.

- Friend : blah blah blah;

- Georgia: blah blah blah;

… when I saw my self posting a thing I couldn’t recognise having thought of. Neither remembering having thought in a previous conversation. chilllll.

- Friend : are you nuts? why are you saying this?

-Georgia : (confused) ehhh, because it must have been this or that or the other thing.

-Georgia : but I am telling you that the place has changed blah blah blah

Ecstatic I was watching myself from a certain distance. crazy uh? It happens a lot to push back thoughts but it was the first time I experienced doing it at real time. It felt like dreaming !

As tech-savvy TIE readers you realize that this is actually a particularity that this this lovely peer-to-peer program has and lets your profile being simultaneously active with different IPs. All it takes to experience this chilling story is having logged in from a different pc. (DIY)

So what’s the blog deal?

Well, it had never occured to me to experience how older people might feel with technology, sometimes. Understand in theory yes, but live it never.
There it goes, now I can discuss with myself on skype and with mom in real life.

no comments please, I am moved.

OK you cheapskates, what do you think of the iPhone now?

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:53:03 +0000

Bear in mind that by calling you cheapskates, I also call myself the same (plus, I’m Dutch…). Remember that I was the one raving about a €30 contract-less phone not too long ago, the Motorola Motophone (which I have since given to my mother, who hates it). Since moving to Luxembourg, less than a month ago, I’m shopping for a new phone and am considering the iPhone.

At the same time, do the math! To get the 16GB version, I have to shell over €99 + €50 per month for the next two years. That’s €1300 as a base price for the iPhone, not including the cost of getting hooked to paying such prices in the future.

Some other factors to consider:

There’s is city-wide, free WiFi in Luxembourg (at least one good thing about this small city, apart from me being there )
Skype was just released in the app-store, making calling on the iPod Touch + Wifi a viable option.
Signing a 2 year contract seems like a big deal, considering I just started the job and still need to be able to keep it.
The country of Luxembourg is so small, that I ‘ll be in international roaming mode before I know it (Mobile in Europe sucks, did you know that?)
Taking a 32GB iPod Touch + a internet-less phone, would be ca. €400 + €30 per month = ok, €1120 for 2 years (bearing in mind that I usually NEVER take 2 year contracts on anything!)
I already have an excellent portable camera, the IXUS 870 IS
I also expect an upgraded iPhone to come around, hopefully within the next 6 months, but too long for me to wait.

So, it’s a tough decision for a cheapskate like me.

It’s taken me a long time to get to the point of wanting to use a touch-screen, which I considered an inferior typing solution, until… I watched this video. It’s amazing that this guy, sitting in a moving vehicle shaking like a bull on steroids, can type intelligible words on his iPhone, and nothing at all on a regular button-based keyboard.

Take that together with the iPhone OS 3, due to come out within the next 1-3 months, and it sounds like an interesting option. But €1300 for a phone? Man!

What do you say, cheapskates, buy or don’t buy?

Vincent

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Smartphone misconceptions

Kari Silvennoinen — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:20:13 +0000

Judging from Vincent’s latest post (and the comments!) about why he thinks Android will suck, there are many misunderstandings about global smartphone markets. First of all, they are a small subset of all handset market – just about 10%. There are many who are blinded by their US-centric power-user views. The echo chamber of blogs doesn’t help much, especially because most blogs are also U.S.-based. This smartphone market share graph by Volker Weber is one of the best to illustrate that North America is totally different than other markets. The differences do not limit to smartphones, there are huge differences in mobile usage also.

The other thing to note is that the dominating player right now with more than two thirds of the market is Symbian, which is backed by, among others, the number one mobile manufacturer, Nokia. Both have summarily dismissed iPhone and Android as nothing more than niche (“iPhone is nice, but that’s about it”, “Just another Linux phone”?). They are also both usually missing from all reporting concerning Android and iPhone. Not taking them into account is like talking about PC industry and forgetting about Windows and Dell.

It’s always a good reminder that Nokia is also the world’s largest MP3 player and digital camera manufacturer. They also have more than half of the smartphone market. From a U.S. perspective this might not be so visible, because in the U.S. market the best selling smartphones are Blackberry Pearl, Motorola Q and Apple iPhone. If these are your idea of smartphones, do yourself a favour and familiarise yourself with Nokia’s Nseries (for consumers) and Eseries (for enterprise).

In the Open Handset Alliance’s FAQ, the alliance says that the benefits of an open platform for operators and manufacturers are lower costs and flexibility to offer services. For consumers, they promise cheaper prices, but given that most phones are given free by the operator or that it doesn’t actually make any business-sense to do give phones on a discount without a reason, this is probably a joke. Also, do not read too much into the “partnerships” in OHA, as many of those companies are also involved with Symbian and many other mobile initiatives.

The business model of your average mobile carrier is to make money out of you by offering you value-added services. The problem in the marketplace is that most people are just fine with voice and SMS. In the EU, many people feel that mobile data is still too expensive to the extent that the EU will probably mandate some price limits. Seriously, this is an industry that thought WAP and walled gardens were the future. Open competition is an anathema for them.

What the carriers with their monopoly mindset didn’t see coming was that internet is everywhere for far more competitive price and experience than what they can deliver. A surprise hit in Finland is a USB-device with 3G connection with gives you mobile broadband to your laptop with fixed monthly price. Why not just use your mobile’s Bluetooth instead is something a more technically oriented guy would think. But that’s why this guy can’t understand either why Google sees more search activity from an iPhone than from other handsets.

Many ISPs have started to adopt the mobile operators’ tactics now that the basic service is so low-margin. Of course, they can’t go as far as they’d love – you can’t imagine your ISP mandating what kind of computer you can use to connect to the net. In part, this is what the net neutrality discussion is about.

Google reported some time ago, that iPhone is by far the most used mobile user-agent. You can take this as a success story to Apple (and AT&T), but you could also see the sorry state of internet on mobile. A device with a tiny market share dominates internet usage? This is of course good news for iPhone carriers, who would love to have more customers like that. The question is, is the reason that using the web is so easy on an iPhone or because the iPhone owners behave differently? A little bit of both is always the easy way out, but whatever, the bottom line is that it brings more internet traffic revenue to mobile carriers. One point of warning, though, one reason for iPhone’s search dominance to keep in mind is only hinted in the article – the default search engine for many mobiles isn’t Google, but Yahoo! or even an operator’s own.

Then there’s the talk about the open platform of Android. One problem when talking about iPhone SDK and Android is that, right now, neither are “real” in the sense that so far all we have seen is hype. As a Symbian boss said, “We take [Android] seriously but we are the ones with real phones, real phone platforms and a wealth of volume built up over years”. In 2007, 141 different models and 77,3 million Symbian phones were sold. The fight between Android and iPhone SDK is pointless if you don’t include Symbian in it. It is open (to an extent), it’s free, there’s no AppStore (which is good and bad), there’s digital signatures (which is good and bad). And there are almost 9,000 third-party applications.

Want IM and VoIP on your smartphone today? Here’s a Gizmo client for Symbian S60 -platforms by Nokia (See the site for other cool apps if you happen to have a compatible phone). Do not forget the power mobile operators have over their networks, even that app can’t use VoIP on 3G, just on WLAN. Apple and Google are not mobile companies and that’s why they try to change the rules more to the their liking. This is a good thing, but history has proved these efforts have so far been very futile.

This Wired article on Motorola ROKR couple years back is a good reminder of some laws of the mobile market. Of course, the article didn’t age that well (which seems to be quite common at Wired), but the middle part with Nokia’s Vanjoki is worth a second read, especially now that Nokia is busy with Ovi.

PS. I’m a low-profit customer for my mobile operator, I have a simple SonyEricsson K610i with Opera Mini that I use web with like three times a year. I tried to use mobile internet while “outside the grid” (e.g. WLAN or DSL), but because I happened to be outside a major city (and 3G connectivity), the experience sucked a lot. We wanted to see a YouTube movie but were unable to. And this was 2008.

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Why Android will suck

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:33:38 +0000

Hello again, Vincent here. Excuse me, I seem to be in a cranky mood lately, as far as technology goes, probably explaining my public rants towards the Facebooks and Scobles of this world. But I can’t let that stop me, here’s another one, aimed at Google’s Android.

Yesterday, Rich Miner, group manager for mobile platforms for Google, announced that he believed the distribution of Android to surpass that of the iPhone-OS. Maybe so, but I have little doubt that it will be equally, if not more crippled than the iPhone has been so far.

Three reasons:

hardware,
carriers,
and the business-model.

On the hardware-side, Google will have to design an OS for a number of mobile-technologies, ranging from Samsung to Motorola. The kind of legacy-support kind of reminds me of a number of other software-projects: Microsoft’s Windows, which is historically (maybe not currently) known for its software-vulnerabilities due to its legacy-support; and cross-platform web-ware like Adobe’s Air and Flash, and Sun’s Java, both not exactly top-of-the-line in terms of performance and elegance. But, cross-platform alone has never stopped developers from creating (mostly free) applications. So, my worries here are security and user-interface, and I expect the latter to especially suck.

The other side is the carriers, who have shown no qualms about enforcing their rules on both hardware- and software-manufacturers. Fact is that while iPhone 2.0 may become more open, it will be limited by Apple to not disrupt their business-arrangement with carriers. This is implemented in two ways: in the restricted range of applications that can be developed for the iPhone (e.g. very likely no Skype) and the distribution of said applications (centralised and approved by Apple or NO GO).

Finally, the business-model. When the iPhone SDK was released, it was reportedly downloaded more than 100,000 times. Very likely this happened for several reasons:

the market for Apple-products is notably less price-sensitive (k-ching, baby!);
iTunes as a store (easy $$$);
VCs like Kleiner Perkins are holding out carrots (omg, I’m gonna be rich);
and it has strong relationships with carriers (a big barrier for mobile software-publishing so far).

Will the same thing happen for Google’s Android? Let’s see.

It’s Google, and we all know that the company does not have a history for charging for things.
While Google has created ecosystems of “apps” with its iGoogle and Google desktop-service, I don’t think any of these are premium. Also, their video-store, its one commercial platform, has failed.
Similarly, it’s releasing the OS for free under an Apache Software License, and we all know how easy it is to make money on open-source platforms.
There is a fund, but it comes from Google, not exactly a signal that the market believes in Android’s commercial success
It does have confirmed partnerships with carriers like China Mobile, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, but how restrictive will these partnerships be?

And probably some other things I forgot.

I may be cranky, but believe me that I want software like Android to succeed. Just like I want a self-sufficient Linux OS (no, it doesn’t exist!). But Google’s strategy appears too fragmented, too focussed on the technology, and too little on the business of it. Maybe, maybe, Google is planning to become a carrier themselves. There have been plenty of rumours about that since the 700 Mhz auction. Instead, I expect that their main goal is to extend their advertising-platform as efficiently as possible to the mobile sphere, and that that would be incompatible with a large technology-push towards building physical networks.

What do you think? Thumbs up or down for Android and why???

Welcoming Ms. Georgia Psyllidou on Tech IT Easy !!!

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:03:57 +0000

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I can only guess what the man on the right picture is doing here. I guess he makes our new blogger, Ms. Georgia Psyllidou (left), look good. I’d like to spend some time, introducing her to you.

Georgia is actually an acquaintance of Jeremy’s, though she caught my attention by some of the comments she’s been leaving on this blog, which I felt showed inspiration, style, the ability to build up an argument, and an understanding of matters of technology (no pressure, G.).

Georgia’s from Greece, though she’s been living in Paris for three years, where she’s been studying management and telecommunications, and is currently employed by Orange Business Services, as a solutions engineer in areas including data access services, VOIP, and security. She also has a background in computer- and electrical engineering.

I’m not allowed to say too much about her professional dreams, as those are still “in progress,” but I can tell you that they involve transforming natural paradises into technological utopias, hopefully without stepping on too many fish…

Her ambitions for this blog, so she told me, are to discuss themes that she comes up with during coffee-breaks, showers, supermarket-queues, and routine code-monkeying. Which is fine, as I think we can all identify with that. More specifically, she wants to discuss anything from internet practices and behaviours, business, and whatever else pops up in her mind.

So her tech-credentials are all covered then! Concerning her style, Jeremy calls it “inimitable” when she writes in French, and I have faith she can replicate it in English also.

Oh, and she’s never blogged before. So be gentle, and above all, join me in welcoming Georgia to this blog !

A warm welcome, Georgia!

P.S. you can hook up with her on LinkedIn here.

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Why Facebook will eventually fail

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:34:14 +0000

I’ve only got a few minutes to write this post, so pardon me if I’m sketchy on the details.

A blogpost at GigaOm covers some of the iterations that social networks on the internet went through over the years. Pretty interesting, though incomplete. The author also warns that it is dangerous to predict the next wave, based on the past, and I’m not even going to try.

But what I am certain of is that Facebook will eventually fail. Why?

Because what Facebook lacks, and this is a flaw in the whole digital ecosystem, is c o h e s i o n. While it allows me to contact any friend on there at the touch of a button, it does not actually bring our lives much closer together. Instead we live our lives in parallel, sometimes continents apart, and all we see of each other is what we choose to publish online.

It operates on a very superficial level, and soon becomes quite monotonous to follow the twitter-like life-stream of what are essentially caricatures of a distant memory of friendship. And because it is the nature of things that people become less and less involved, it will not take long before Facebook becomes a stale contact-list, with the only blips of life coming from “those youngsters” that think that anyone actually cares to read their status. And when it reaches that state in the mind of its users, it won’t be long before a new, fresher “contact list” comes along.

We are still not at the level where a social network online is the same what it means offline. In the real world, a network is a chemical thing, where people interact on many different levels, stimulate each other, anger each other, change each other, etc. And this is just as applicable to personal networks, as it is in business.

I’m not sure if it will ever be possible to reach that same level of involvement with an internet-app. I’d like to think that at least the social network on mobile-phones both overcomes the geographic and the psychological barriers that exist. So technology can definitely be compatible with chemistry to some extent. But text, which clearly has advantages in other areas, is a different matter.

But this is just an opinion. What do you think? Is Facebook enough? What characteristics do we need in a technological network for it to become a true social network?

Vincent

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In Silicon Valley, enjoying

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:42:15 +0000

I’m exhausted and it’s only half of the study trip, but I enjoy SO MUCH going with a great bunch of cool guys to amazing companies like OQO, Netvibes, City Council of SF, l’Atelier US, eBay, Box.net, SRI, Stanford, Meetro and tomorrow Twitter, Neocase, Microsoft, Google, Plug & Play, the Churchill Club, XOBNI – & the day after Orb Networks, Orange, SAP, PodTech, Bizanga + great VCs like Jean-Louis Gassée, Vincent Worms from Partech, Matt Lecar from Partech, Sven Strohband from MDV & Jeff Clavier from SoftTech VC + Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, who actually recruited Guy Kawasaki out of Apple & François Laugier, a prominent lawyer in Silicon Valley….that I haven’t had the energy to blog recently. At night, after 7 visits during the day, all I think about is collapsing.

We’re only half way and here’s our program (below). I’ll make sure I blog extensively as soon as I find some time – although I’ll have to blog on TechEd in Barcelona first. I’m late, I know.

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How the world looked like before the Internet

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:59:54 +0000

Thanks to Emmanuel, also a blogger on Tech IT Easy, for pointing this video to me. Have you ever tried to recall how the world went round before we had cell phones, laser printers, wireless and unlimited bandwidth at a fixed subscription price? Well if not, then this video might prove enlightening..& funny (I had AOL, a landline Internet connexion, & a matrix printer too). I’m pretty sure my youngest sister never used a public phone by the way. I should ask.

Anyways, I’m interested in your experience if you used to work in a world virgin of emails, search engines and cellphones.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxxJJUXmo2o]

Guys, the video has been removed from YouTube, but you may find it here.

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Looking towards a new naming-convention for the wave of web/software-services

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:49:28 +0000

Until now, we have all been happy (and confused) about web 2.0. What is it built on? Ajax, Flash,Silverlight, Air, Php? Is it a platform or is it an app? And, what the hell is it?

Tim O’Reilly has done his best to build upon his original naming of the phenomenon Web 2.0. According to him, Web 2.0 is… well read his paragraph-long definition here, and can be split into following characteristics. To me it still seems very abstract, so let’s discuss the points, one by one.

First, platform. This means that web-based technology can be used to launch a range new applications, allowing developers to build on top of it and earn money too. This is happening, e.g. Facebook, though monetarily, only in a minority of 2.0 apps.
Second, data, which means the information created by users and about users, which can be leveraged in applications. Again, happening, though only partially. Users own some data, other data created by them is owned by the site, e.g. Digg.
Third, participation as a basis for an application. Again happening. eBay has no value without sellers and buyers.
Fourth, “open source” development. Slowly happening, though there is still no clear business-model and much resistance to it. You could see the blogosphere as a bad example, and Facebook as a good one.
Fifth, content-based business models. Eh… there’s a lot of content, a lot of noise, very few business models based on it. You could argue that this has been newspapers’ business-model for 100 years and look where they are now.
Sixth, perpetual development of applications. That means that an application is continuously improving, which is clearly happening across the scale.
Seventh, software above single devices, the merging of desktop and web, or perhaps leaving behind the desktop all together. So far this has been fairly one-way, from desktop to web. But there are some great examples, particularly in the SAAS-sphere.
Eight, early adopters. This was perhaps the case in 2004, but I think application-developers are seeing a slow-down as supply is clearly exceeding any possible demand.

The web is fragmented, very much so. We have productivity apps, which can be split into a number of segments, we have the media, we have e-commerce, we have communication, etc. So really, what we are looking at is the evolution of applications, based on various technologies, and which can be segregated into a number of fields: Work 2.0, Media 2.0, Commerce 2.0, and Communication 2.0.

And by separating functions, it becomes easier whether there is true evolution, by which I mean the transition towards a new platform. This, however, also means that it must also be sustainable, an important point to keep in mind.

Work 2.0

What this includes are technological tools which enable humans to increase their productivity. And really, this can again be segmented into fields like word processing 2.0; accounting 2.0; graphics 2.0; etc. The real question is, have we evolved in that domain?

If you look at how people are being productive, the answer is yes and no. Due to the shift of “work” apps from the desktop to the web, you see a number of people shifting their work-area to the web also. However, there is still a barrier between the desktop, which I define as offline-use, and the online web, as there is no ubiquitous internet, nor are there many web-apps which comfortably work on the desktop or other devices either. What we are also seeing is that text-based applications do best in the web-sphere, but anything dependant on CPU or processor-speed (graphics or computation) is still largely restricted to desktop-usage.

Media 2.0

We are clearly seeing a shift here, which started with web-publishing of text, to pictures, to audio, to video. The shift becomes all that much more apparent if you look at the way media 1.0 is dealing with this: Lawsuits and DRM from Hollywood and Record-companies; newspapers shutting down; and many media 1.0 businesses shifting to online business models. And while there clearly is a future for media 2.0, very few “independents” are making any real money from it.

Commerce 2.0

This is clearly the winner, at least in terms of revenue. So much so, that a 3.0 stage is sure to follow soon. It’s not universal, but business models like eBay (which I would define as 2.0) lead to a shift of second-hand goods-trading from off-line to online. Books (Amazon) saw a similar movement. Electronics also. E-commerce as a platform for individuals is doing particularly well.

Where we need an evolution is in terms of interactive goods, i.e. fashion and fresh food, which will require some out of the box thinking, beyond the web-desktop paradigm, but towards the “real world”-web-”real world” paradigm. A great example is the recent announcement of buying songs played in Starbucks through iTunes in real-time; which clearly asks for an expansion to concerts and other environments, as well as similar usage-mechanisms with other types of products.

Communication 2.0

Primarily being designed as a communication platform, the web clearly shines and is growing in this regard. From e-mail to messaging, to voip to video-oip. Facebook is a clear evolution here as well, allowing for a rich environment for people to interact, beyond text, voice, video. Some people would argue Twitter is part of this, I would classify this as rss 3.0 and thus media.

So, can you come up with other segments in which there has been or needs to be an evolutionary leap, and which can be achieved by leveraging the advantages the internet provides?

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Sustainable, Information Technology?

Jeremy Fain — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:15:35 +0000

Here’s a little fact sheet mixed with some thoughts on Green IT. Green IT is a truly serious topic that should be thought over and tackled over a long period of time. There is not one answer to the sustainable development challenge. On thing that’s pretty sure though is that Information Technology, an industry that grows steadily, represents a part of the problem and probably has the potential to generate the bulk of the solution.

CURRENT SITUATION

According to the Gartner Group, 2% of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are generated by computer networks. Airlines are responsible for the exact same percentage of gas emissions. This figure is bound to increase due to the fact that 3 million new Internet users join the web every month – the bulk of them surfing from their cellular phones; and the huge investments Web players do in datacenters (I noticed something like one third of funds raised by self-hosting SaaS or web startups are aimed at datacenter investments).

Consider a file. In its entire life cycle, it will consume 10 times more energy than it took to create because: it will be edited, saved, stored on a client hard drive, printed, sent by email, stored on a server, etc. For every new file created, 400 Gbytes of bandwidth need to be added to the Internet (think Video on Demand or advertising banner…).

Every second that passes sees 24 Kg of PCs produced, 1.8 tons of raw materials aimed at the Information Technology market, half a ton of CO2 generated by hardware heat, 108 Kg. of PC-related garbage.

Today, there are about 315 million PCs obsolete enough to need a recycling. Huge market! Any creative entrepreneur in the room?

2 billion more Internet users will cost 3 times more energy to connect.

THREATS

Permalinks urge servers to be connected 24/7/365. Albeit it unleashes positive collaborative energies, Web 2.0 is extremely resource consuming.

VoIP is a fantastic cost-killing opportunity. But it increases traffic dramatically. This issue will have to be tackled at some point. Again, there is huge a market for a VoIP secure compression standard just in case some genius entrepreneur happens to read these lines. We are still in need of an MP3 or DivX standard for IP voice messages.

RAID redundancies imply purchasing 2 hard drives. Which actually increases consumption by a factor of 2.

Cellphones do more and more things everyday. Will a printer be embedded in every mobile phone in a future?

SOLUTIONS

Multi core processors (produce less heat, more powerful)

Grid (calculation resource mutualization)

Working from home from time to time saves time (you don’t waste 2 hours a day in traffic) to yourself and money to your company (more time to work resulting from commute time saved). Furthermore, leaving the car in the garage lowers CO2 emissions.

Bicycles to go to work (see the Velib initiative in Paris, designed and operated by JCDecaux & user interface + inventory system built on the Microsoft platform) cf. picture above

Electricity consumption optimization software solutions like IDEAS program startups KalibraXe (a marketplace that allows your company to lower its electricity bill through lowering sourcing costs by making suppliers compete on price) and DOTVision Streetlight Vision (that help cities reduce their electricity bills: who hasn’t seen a street lamp switched on during the day?). Both ‘undergo’ severe 4-digit growths and I actually believe there is a huge market for clean tech + software solutions. Most of the time, sustainable development and economic performance constrains are aligned. I don’t think these could ever part ways.

Creative ways to lower server load: use [RSS + cache] combinations as included in Google Reader or use solutions like FaceBook in consumer environments, or blueKiwi in enterprise environments to lower the number of emails, which reduces storage and bandwidth needs through centralizing all the information within a social entity on one single location (eg Facebook group or blueKiwi topic board).

This is something we do at Microsoft: every file printed out has its own cover sheet mentioning the author. This way, people save the first page (that mention the author) by putting it in a recycling bin and are bound not to take print outs that aren’t theirs – you know, when you realize you took someone else’s printouts – it’s often too far to go and put it back…

Use recycled paper for draft printing AND corporate communications AND product brochures. Basically, use recycled paper as much as you can. Some people say the recycling process is more energy-intensive than the process of destroying. I don’t believe recycling has no future: I see it as a very convenient solution to start working in the right direction.

Server virtualization has turned the tables: running many environments on a single machine made the computer industry paradigm shift from “1 application = 1 server”. In many companies, when there used to be 8 servers used at 10% each, you now find one server used at 80% of its capacities + 1 back-up server. On top of that, it all results in costing less in Air Conditioning to keep the room cool. I therefore bought some VMWare stock recently …

Palm cancels the Foleo! – a case of bad portfolio-management?

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:56:36 +0000

Yesterday, as I was reading an article on portfolio management in my issue of HBR, important news (to some) was announced: Palm has cancelled the release of the Foleo—it’s ultra-mobile laptop solution. I can’t speak for all, but as a fairly mobile person and a writer, I find the idea of ultra-portable devices with good keyboards (!) very alluring, and don’t care so much about performance and app-support. On a side-note, I am currently looking at the Dana Wireless as a similar solution.

The Foleo has of course been met with much scepticism by the (consumer-)media; it’s not quite a laptop and not quite a mobile phone. It was announced around the hype of the iPhone. Palm’s own line of mobiles and handhelds are not meeting the bar for innovation. And there was this whole discussion around the $100-laptop, which was not very well-perceived either (though still more favourable than the Foleo). We are in very turbulent times as far as the mobile platform is concerned, and perhaps it was simply a bad time to launch. It probably also didn’t help that the iPhone outsold every smartphone on the US-market in July and is about to launch in Europe (I won’t go into last night’s shocking announcement of a $200 price-drop!).

Porfolio-management, as outlined in the HBR-issue, works on three horizons, which develop in parallel. The first is the day-to-day management of products; you think in quarters and focus on current competitive factors. The third is the innovative activities of a firm, much lab-development, nothing in commercial income. The second brings it all together. HBR calls this phase the “equivalence of adolescence” in business. Innovations are put in a commercial path and are expected to become self-sufficient product-lines, hopefully sooner than later.

Of course this is not easy. You have to manage horizon 1, make sure that cash-flow happens. And you have to manage horizon 3, make sure that there are innovations in the future. However, what if these two don’t connect? Horizon 1 staff is busy fighting off the competition, and also more motivated by the instant gratification from the market. And horizon 3 is all excited about their lab-work, their Foleo if you will, but can not present a viable business-model for it. So you bring the Foleo into the second horizon, and dedicate staff to launching it. But at the same time the pressure on horizon 1, the market, is increasing. Customers are demanding better Treo’s and the competition is fierce. And on horizon 3, the innovation-platform is far from stable either, as the technology is changing rapidly. And horizon 2 gets neglected, staff perhaps diverted to horizon 1 to help manage the day-to-day, and to horizon 3, to develop new tech. Etc. etc.

I imagine that this is a plausible scenario for Palm’s current fiasco. The question is of course how to do this better? Many companies don’t actually manage this process very well, and that is how disruptive innovation can gain a foothold into a market. An example is VOIP. AT&T had internet-telephony on it’s third horizon for a while, but never actually managed to bring it to horizon 2, until it was too late and competitors like Skype and soon Ooma, (which I’m very excited about) launched.

Some solutions mentioned in the article are:

Insulate businesses, not products: by turning your horizon 2 product-lines into a complete enterprise, with dedicated management, sales staff, and technology support, you prevent individual leakages to horizon 1. Another way of looking at this is corporate venturing; creating a spin-off dedicated to commercially viable innovations and spinning them back in when they are ready for prime-time.
Use acquisitions to bridge the periods that there are no horizon 2 products and the horizon 3 “labs” still need time: as Jeremy oulined in his last post, this clearly works for Oracle. By doing this, you again ensure a culture of dedicating resources to long-term growth, not only the short-term.
Recognise that your portfolio 2 products may be niche for a while: The Foleo is clearly a niche-product, but can grow into a magnificent platform over time. But expecting it to immediately gain mass can be fatal to the limited capabilities of portfolio 2 “start-ups.”
Dedicate talented leaders to horizon 2: New business developers are a class apart, entrepreneurs with a corporate mindset. Parent-companies can be quite generous with funding, but stingy with putting the right man or woman in charge.
Blocking resource-migration between horizons: I think this should be carefully evaluated and there will be many adaptions on a per-project basis until this process works well. Nevertheless you cannot expect a horizon 2 product to succeed, if you’re constantly pulling resources away from it to deal with horizon 1 & 3 concerns.

Clearly this represents an interesting paradigm for any company to view their life-cycle in. One implication is that executing well on all three levels can decrease the sole dependance on market-share, which many (large) companies are pushing for, but which also makes them lax in their drive to innovate, and which is also no longer as legally acceptable as it once was.

It is hard to say what exactly happened with Palm’s Foleo. Was it a case of scientific over-excitement, which does not guarantee commercial viability? Was it a result of competitive pressures? Or are there more exciting technologies on the horizon? From their blog-post, they make it appear like the latter is the reason, but of course we’ll never know the entire truth.

I imagine the Foleo II has been pushed back to horizon 3, and hope that they can find synergies between their diverse product-lines. Like Apple is now pushing OSX down to its mobile line-up, Palm should do the same. But of course they need to have a good operating system in the first place to do so, and a somewhat stable hardware-platform to build upon. All in all, I feel a little sorry for Palm but am still rooting for it to succeed, as it is a sympathetic company and more competition hopefully leads to better products all-round.

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US subprime crunch impact on high tech

Jeremy Fain — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:31:23 +0000

There has been a good deal of literature on the recent subprime mortgage financial so-called crisis. I haven’t seen anything related to the impact of this downturn on the high tech industry. Let’s hence cross the chasm and write a brief note about it.

In short and broadly speaking, what the subprime lending crunch is all about:

Not-so-professional professional lenders like NovaStar & New Century Financial grant mortgages to low-revenue borrowers; interest rates pick up and so does the debt burden, from a low-revenue borrower view point; so, low-revenue borrowers can’t actually refinance the interests of their debt, which means they have to sell their property. But since a large number of low-revenue borrowers act the same way and the real estate market shows uncertainties, estate prices go down, which urges potential buyers to wait longer, and refrains borrowers to refinance their debt, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, this year’s subprime credit crunch looks a lot alike what happened in Japan in 1993, although and fortunately at a much lower scale: mortage lenders limited partners (mainly financial institutions: banks or insurance companies) as for a due subprime lenders can’t refinance because their low-revenue borrowers are having a hard time making both ends meet. Henceforth, subprime lenders are stated insolvent and go bust, their assets being redistributed to their lenders, and the remaining to their accounts payable & shareholders. It goes without saying that the last ones to get their money back, namely the shareholders, usually don’t get it all back (this is A)… Meanwhile, financial institutions from all over the world have invested, on behalf of their in subprime securities, supposed to be zero-risk investments. However, it appears these zero-risk investments happen to be very risky (this is B). A + B = generalized lost of confidence in financial markets that central banks try to diminish by printing dollar bills aimed at making sure local financial institutions, which have invested their clients’ money at zero-risk rates, don’t fall; scapegoats nominated: debt / risk rating agencies like S&P, Fitch, Moodies (the usual suspects); increased volatility due to higher sensitiveness to macroeconomic perspectives.

Nothing so bad after all. Everybody knew there would be a downturn at some point. The point is that nobody knew how bad it would turn out to be, and when it would occur.

Impact of subprime crunch on the Software industry:

R&D budget cuts: this is typical everytime there’s a downturn: large corporations cut R&D budgets (which I find dumb since downturns are excellent times for innovation and fostering one’s competitive advantage through information systems; but well, I’m not in charge here). End result: software sales aimed at R&D departments (eg. Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA) are likely to suffer temporarily.

Online Advertising. Well, let’s not beat around the bush: what about Google? My call: any crisis can only be positive for Google; offline commercials are harder to track. Through online advertising, you get to gather scientific ROI metrics, and benefit from increased accountability, flexibility, reactivity. A crisis can only accelerate the shift from offline advertising to online ads. It would be a good time for Microsoft to launch its AdCenter platform. Advertisers are dying to be able to choose between Google (which has become pretty expensive being alone over years) and something else than Yahoo! Overture. By the way, Criteo is soon to release Criteo Ads worldwide (only available in Beta and in French as of today) as an alternative to Google.

US subprime crunch will necessarily benefit independent software vendor SideTrade, a net working capital killer SaaS company (reduced net working capital increases free cash flows and accelerates debt refinancing – which is always a smart move when interest rates go up).

US subprime crunch will also benefit procurement management software (for cost control reasons obviously).

The subprime crisis will have no impact on retail (people will still need to eat and buy consumable &/or perishable goods), storage investments, and security solutions.

Telco-related software technologies potentially driving cost killing (like VoIP systems: remember Skype is software, not telco) will regain interest from corporate buyers and CIO since negotiations are likely to get tougher with mobile and land line fleet vendors.

CRM and BI / Datamining shouldn’t suffer from the downturn since it is generally agreed that it costs more to acquire a new client than to keep existing customers.

Impact on subprime crunch on IT consulting:

Severe shortcuts are expected in IT consulting, especially in banking / insurance where uncertainties are likely to remain higher for a short period of time (a few months). Such redundancies will have a positive impact on the software industry where finding skilled developers has become nothing less than a nightmare. Last and not least, the subprime crunch is very likely to accelerate the ongoing IT & BPO offshoring trend.

Impact on Venture Capital:

On the one hand, venture capitalists may suffer from limited partners (financial institutions in general + wealthy individuals and families) appearing less eager to increase VC-managed funds. On the other hand, venture capitalists invest in private equity that isn’t correlated with either the fixed income market (high tech startups never raise debt).

So what, is that a draw? Not quite. My call is that the VC market will suffer if stockmarket indexes remain low. The reason I believe so is that IPO opportunities will result dampered for a mid-term time frame.

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iPhone, the ultimate test

Steve Danino — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:57:14 +0000

Bon appêtit.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dr5zAOc7-0]

Steve, too tired to post anything consistent tonight, is a co-author on Tech IT Easy. You can find out more about him on this blog’s initial announcement.

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I tested the iPhone…

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:50:28 +0000

…about a week ago @ VirtuOZ party in Paris. Thank you Franck Lassagne from Giiks (in French) for bringing yours.

I could only play with it for a few seconds as Cédric Giorgi – see my blogroll, left in the background, and Jérôme Bouteiller, from NetEco, wanting bad to steal it from me. Which they did.

But albeit short, it was a pretty nice experience: it’s small and rather pretty. The touchpad is quite handy, the screen displays nice colors and sharp contrasts.

However, although the future success of the iPhone is a no brainer, I feel many HTC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry and Samsung smartphones deserve the same product launch treatment and are of similar quality.

Apple as a brand surfs on a ‘Cool’ wave, just like Google does, and knows how to reap the benefits of it: the Apple recipe finds its success through nice industrial design, focus on details of the user experience, and by mashing good hardware and software to manufacture consistent products.

Congrats to Apple for its product design and launch know-how. The iPhone seems to be a pretty nice device.

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Is Enterprise Software…dead?

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 00:10:30 +0000

“We aren’t considering investing in enterprise software anymore” recently said a venture capitalists at a recent public gathering.

Will venture capitalists stop invest in ‘traditional’ enterprise software startups? This is what one may think when listening to many of them nowadays. This is highly unlikely though, and here’s why.

The YouTube deal must have rung the bell: VCs are getting crazy about consumer web. But some venture capitalists tend to forget the bulk of top software exits come from enterprise applications. One may present them with the best enterprise software company, some venture capitalists come up with answers like: “Investing in enterprise software is like investing in automotive companies: the big players are already there“. So, would enterprise software innovation be..dead? Obviously not as the automotive industry still is the sector that patents most innovations, even today. About enterprise software, no wonder it’s an episodic state of mind.

True, enterprise software has become a lot tougher than it used to be: unless you build something on cutting-edge, patented technology, or unless you find a really juicy niche you can exploit without too many predators noticing, it’s gotten tougher to go out of the wood and fight with the big guys with no other sound differentiating competitive advantage or unique selling point than your entrepreneurial energy.

However, I believe the ‘automotive industry comparison’ conveyed by some venture capitalists is biased by the craze around the few web apps everybody’s talking about: Facebook, Twitter, and soon pownce. In the aftermath of the YouTube acquisition, everybody’s been watching everybody: which major player is going to make the next purchase and blow the whistle of the next Internet software consolidation? My opinion on consumer web apps is that there’s something ‘magical’ about getting a massive number of people use your service. I guess anyone without a deep sense of consumers would have found hard putting the YouTube success in equations @ business planning stage for instance. And frankly, my intuition suggests me that many consumer startups are to die, short of cash, in the next 2 / 3 years. Think of a US$ 1000 investment (in other words, peanuts): how do you see most consumer startups paying US$ 1000 back? The one consumer web startups to survive the upcoming consolidation (500+ video on demand startups and counting…) will be declared ‘the fittest’ and economically most viable to succeed in the ‘next web’.

Back to enterprise software, I believe it’s a business a lot easier to put in equations. True, Siebel or Dynamics aren’t as sexy business as Flickr or Twitter. Nonetheless, you don’t need to be a genius to build a product (you need good engineering) that fits a sound market demand (good marketing) and which you can sell (you need good sales talents); whilst although you may build a consumer product that fits a demand, there’s still something irrational about creating a buzz – at least that’s my opinion.

On top of this, new business models such as software on demand, or as a Service (Software as a Service) have enabled new types of players, such as SalesForce.com, to emerge and result in deep & slow reshaping of the competitive landscape. Software as a Service, as opposed to the licensing model, allow companies to pay over time and hence avoid the pain of a down payment. Venture capitalists seem a lot keener on exploring enterprise SaaS though. Good news.

Finally, day in day out, it seems the very best venture capitalists remain pragmatic and don’t abide by the ‘automotive industry comparison’ related above. As an epitome, Sofinnova Partners, a top venture capital shop located in Paris & San Francisco, recently invested in collaborative enterprise software startup blueKiwi that intends to go at loggerheads with IBM’s collaborative tools by packaging a ‘BlueKiwi for Sharepoint‘ enterprise 2.0 suite no-brainer bundle in partnership with Microsoft (needless to say, blueKiwi is an IDEAS company). Business as usual? Not at all: the blueKiwi deal announces the come back of Sofinnova Partners in the field of enterprise software, after a 4-year strong blackout. My call is that this move will set the trend for years to come in the venture capital industry (at least in Europe) when VCs realize how many beautiful companies develop products that aren’t just enterprise software but enterprise enablers, and how many consumer web companies are just Enron-like null pointer exceptions.

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1st anniversary of Tech IT Easy: thank you all

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 23:37:51 +0000

Tech IT Easy was born on June 23th 2006 in Barcelona. One year later, the blog accounts 9 bloggers, 420 posts, 2111 comments.

To all the people who, through their silent visits, valuable comments or interesting publications, have contributed in building this blog that we hope will keep on growing for a little while, the Tech IT Easy team would like to say ‘thank you‘.

As a reminder, Tech IT Easy intends to provide insightful analyses on the last developments of the high tech industry. Our domaines of predilection include all aspects of software (from both a market and a technological side), web apps, information system architecture, consumer electronic devices, human-machine interfaces, hardware, telecomunications, computer networking, digital media, entrepreneurship and venture capital finance.

If you want to join us, contact us. The only constraint: no constraint whatsoever. This blog is no professional venture, just a media ran by a bunch of passionate folks. All you have to do is share your drive for technology and your will to contribute to this blogging startup. Interested? Contact Jeremy here.

Again, thank you all for supporting the growth and content of Tech IT Easy during its first year of existence. Feedbacks will always be appreciated.

Fidji, Vincent, Leonard, Raphaël, Lucien, Steve, Kari, Alexandre, Jeremy

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Microsoft IDEAS software startups web 2.0-style

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:02:33 +0000

The difference between these startups and any Web 2.0 parody of brands is that a vast majority of these software startup actually generate cash. On the WWW, eCommerce companies put aside, the bulk of services generate zero revenues. In the so-called Web 2.0 world, only market leaders like Meetic, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace are profitable – which is not the case with software publishers in general, software being the one industry amongst its peers with the highest row margins.

A few stats about these startups:

- all segments of the software industry represented (digital entertainment, enterprise software, mobility, robotics, SaaS and…Web 2.0)

- an average growth rate of 300%, some of these startups even topping 1000% figures (Miyowa, Excentive, etc.)

- 2 failures out of 50+ companies (4% mortality ratio: extremely low for early stage companies)

- about half of these software ventures have raised series A for an average financing of 3m euros (4m USD) with top-tier venture capital shops

I’m keeping internationalization figures for myself – but I’m telling you, it’s very impressive. More info about the Microsoft IDEAS program aimed at enhancing the expansion of high potential software startups right here.

Before I wrap this post up, which French software startups are to join IDEAS next? We’re opened to all recommendations and I’ll be glad to answer any question regarding this program.

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Which Pocket PC / Smartphone should I buy?

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:05:41 +0000

My cellphone is down: I can hear perfectly people who talk to me, but they often (>50%) can’t, and as you can imagine, it can get pretty annoying…

To make a long story short: I badly need your help. I am to make a significant purchase this very week.

I’ve decided to make a big leap and buy a Pocket PC or Smartphone. I don’t know anything about Pocket PCs & smartphones, except that I don’t want an iPhone, a Blackberry, a Nokia, or anything that doesn’t run Windows Mobile (ideally 6). It’s not that I don’t think these are great products, but I already have a Mac (although I now use Vista @ work and I think it’s much better than Mac OS X for a business purpose, but more on that soon), use Firefox (although I started using IE7 and it’s a good browser), hack code in Java (few time to start going through .Net tutorials, but I should start pretty soon), etc.

So I just feel I ought to eat my own dog food for once (+ I hear Windows Mobile’s really a user-friendly and handy environment). Unless you bring to light a unique selling point that triggers a purchasing decision (like Sony Ericsson P990i’s business card archiver) of course – I’m a pragmatic person.

I’m in desperate need for your advice. Which Smartphone / Pocket PC / PDA should I buy (new or second hand)? Many thanks for your help.

Here are the specs of the device I’m looking for: keyboard, wireless, Windows Mobile 6, GPS, Office, Acrobat Lite, direct push emails, 3G, HSDPA, ideally Messenger as well, I don’t care about having a crappy camera, HTML support in email client, Bluetooth 2.0, @ least 400 Mhz. CPU, EDGE, GPRS, mini SD memory, Quad-band, Zip manager.

I’ve already listed relevant devices and I am yet to go through their reviews: HTC P3300 (also named Artemis), E-Ten Glofiish X500, HP iPAQ hw6915, E-Ten Glofiish M700, HTC TyTn, Samsung SGH-i320/SGH-i600, Palm Treo 750. Any suggestion or feedback?

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Study Trip to Silicon Valley / San Francisco

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:42:20 +0000

REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSED. NO MORE EMAIL PLS.

Fellas,

I should have 2 months available in Nov.-Dec. 07 – mainly to clear all academic obligations I’ll still have to abide by (reports, thesis, etc.). But I thought I could be efficient for once and find some time to enjoy my last bits of student life.

That’s why I decided a couple weeks ago to organize a study trip to Silicon Valley. It will be a week-long study trip focusing on the business of innovation & technology (entrepreneurship, venture capital, software, computer networks & hardware, consumer electronics & Internet, telecommunications) and actually take place between Sunday, 25th November 2007 and Sunday, 2nd December 2007. No kidding, it’s serious business so save the dates!

The study trip will be put up on behalf of the Master of Information Technology at Ecole Centrale Paris (ECP). But it’s opened to everyone although I have intentionally decided to restrict the number of attendants to 20, or so, for the group 1) to remain manageable; 2) to be big enough to open us the doors of Silicon Valley’s bulge bracket companies (yes, the big ones); 3) to be small enough to enable us to visit start up companies on US Road 101 or Network Circle and venture capitalists directly at their office on Sand Hill Rd.

- Why Silicon Valley? Because it’s Mecca for all geeks, entrepreneurs and technologists. The quality of the organizations we’ll visit and the people we’ll meet there is just unmatchable, and I’m convinced we’ll come back with plenty of new ideas and drive to pour in our respective organizations. Makes sense, doesn’t it? About our stay: I’d rather pick up a hotel in the city center of San Francisco so that we can hang around in the city at night (should cost less than paying cabs to go out and come back). So it’s a trip to San Francisco & Silicon Valley!

- What should we be doing there? Visit universities, start ups, incubators, ventures capitalists, corporations, research centers + probably get a snapshot of how the the wine tastes in Napa Valley + hopefully watch the 49ers play. I’ll keep you updated about all scheduled visits until the agenda is frozen. Oops, I was almost forgetting: we should also have some fun! I know it may sound a bit weird to register for a study trip you have no idea what and who you’ll be visiting. But trust me, every second of the trip will be worth it.

- How much? Should all pile up to 1500 euros maxi. (most probably less) including plane fare, accommodation, 2 meals a day (or maybe around 1200 euros & each one pays for its own meals, we’ll see), and local transportation (bus rental for 1 week for the group). I’ll ask you to pay around 2/3 (two thirds) of it by check or bank wire pretty soon to book for plane tickets and hotels (I’ll book everything before April 22nd 2007 as I want to get rid of this before starting to work full-time). All participants will be informed of all details of the cost breakdown of the study trip. Important notice: as many students are taking part of the trip, one should not be surprised by the low luxury standards we will go for in terms of accomodation and food (we’re heading for a low cost hotel & low cost restaurants). Or there’s no way we would fit in a 1500 euros budget.

- How do I join? Registrations are closed. No more email pls.

- How do I help? Help most welcome, but only if not meant to be polite but to actually help; in this case, just let me know that you can give me a hand organizing the study trip (and preferably what you’d like to do). Even if you’re not coming, I’d be glad to gather valuable contacts in Silicon Valley or useful practical advice.

- FAQ? Use the comment section of this very post. I noticed everybody asks the same questions so let’s pool the answers on this post. In case of a private question, I’ll be glad to answer by e-mail. For instance, I’ve answered this question thrice: in case you’re not departing from Paris and coming back to Paris, you’ll have to arrange your plane tickets yourself (and obviously, you won’t pay for the Paris – San Francisco return ticket).

All this being said, I’m looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco & Silicon Valley!

- Who’s coming already? (nationality, University if still student (if applicable), job & company, nota bene (if applicable))

Jeremy Fain (French, HEC Paris & ECP student, Emerging business team junior business developer @ Microsoft France)

Olivier Ezratty (French, independent innovation strategy consultant in Paris & visiting professor @ ECP)

David Merchin (French, technology innovation consultant in Grenoble)

Youssef el Alaoui (Moroccan, ECP student, information system architecture consultant @ IT service company Weave in Paris)

Julien Genestoux (French, founder and manager @ JobEtudiant & LBO Analyst @ BNP Paribas San Francisco, just joining – no plane & no accommodation to book)

Alexandre Otparlic (French, Director of operations @ IT service corporation Alligra in Paris & visiting professor @ ECP)

Philippe Vaillergues (French, CEO @ IT service company Henix in Paris)

Frédéric Boyadjian (French, entrepreneur, departing from Lyon so no need to arrange for plane tickets)

Fabrice Papst (French, independent innovation consultant, founder of Idou)

Olivier Marx (French, founder of web agency Altics)

Mikaël Benfredj (French, web entrepreneur)

Raphaël Labbé (French, founder and business manager of Internet start up company U.[Lik])

Emmanuel Douaud (French, cofounder of social networking start up SeeMy.fr)

Guillaume Limare (French, ESSEC student, founder of inoveum.com)

Bertrand Scache (French, founder of IT budget consultancy Episystem)

Sylvain Zimmer (French, student @ ENSIMAG, founder of Internet start up company Jamendo)

Yonathan Arfi (French, founder of Arcoprod & Doneo.org)

Nabil Bouchlouh (French, ERP consultant @ Scandent Group, on a mission @ IBM)

Henry Nidecker (Swiss, student @ ??, product manager @ Nidecker Snowboard)

Yann Le Gouic (French, student @ Euromed Marseille, marketer @ stuviVZ)

Jacques Froissant (French, founder @ Altaide and cofounder @ Moovement)

Alain Le Corvec (French, former President @ Philips France)

Jacques Cinqualbre (French, cofounder @ HOPI)

Saïd Sebti (Moroccan, venture capital analyst @ Ventech)

Special thanks for their help planning visits, even though they can’t make it:

Benoît Peyronnet (French, France Telecom Group VoIP Abroad program director)

Dana Parries (American, ECP student, IT specialist @ JP Morgan)

Ghislain Morard (French ECP student, entrepreneur)

Michael Salomon (French, Ph.D. student @ Stanford University)

Special thanks to all bloggers who help marketing the event:

Lucien Huang, Ilan Abehassera, Olivier Ezratty, Marc Duchesne, Julien Codorniou, Ouriel Ohayon & Loïc Le Meur, Thomas Faivre-Duboz, Michel de Guilhermier, Cédric Giorgi, Olivier Marx

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Microsoft will not FOLLOW Apple in phones

Jeremy Fain — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:13:32 +0000

A couple months ago, when Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would launch an iPhone, many bloggers started predicting Microsoft would soon follow Apple in the cellphone market.

Well, just in case you didn’t know, Microsoft entered the mobile phones market in 1998 with Windows CE and later, Windows Mobile. And whilst Apple targets a conservative 1% global market share, Microsoft provides software for 35% of the market already.

To make my point clearer, should Microsoft decide to launch a ZunePhone (250K answers on Google) or not, it’s Apple who is following Microsoft in the mobile devices market, and certainly not the other way around.

Let’s take the reasoning further. Since Apple is a multimedia company (and probably the best at providing a multimedia experience), I bet Apple will launch a gaming console in the next 2 years to compete further with Sony (PlayStation and Walkman) and Microsoft (XBox 360, Vista, Powerpoint (vs. Keynote) & Zune).

To repeat myself: it’s Apple who’s walking in Microsoft footsteps.

Addendum 10:50am: thanks to Kari for pointing out that I’m guilty of not having mentioned Google and more particularly the GooglePhone initative in this post. More soon.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRLRjKCGHek]

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2G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G, 5G, 6G…cleaning the mobile telco standards mess

Jeremy Fain — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:58:21 +0000

Following my post on WiMax, John from Toronto, Canada, asked me to write a little something about the different telecommunication standards available on cell phones as his son is about to open his own cellular phones shop in Toronto.

Well, John, we don’t know each other yet, but your e-mail was so nice and sweet that I don’t know how I could say no. On top of this, I’m always glad to make my readers happy, so if you’ve got any topic you’d like me to launch a discussion about here (provided it’s tech-related, …or not), feel free to email me.

So here’s the thing. I’m not going to delve into the technical details since you asked me not to (and I would’ve had to do some extra homework, so good for me), but rather examine concisely the point of each standard, starting with 1G.

0G phones, standing for the 1st generation of mobile phones, were satellite phones developed for boats mainly – but anyone could get one in one’s car in the beginning of the 90s for several thousand dollars. Networks such as Iridium, Global Star and Eutelsat were truly worldwide (although for physical reasons, think of a satellite as a fixed point above the equator, some Northern parts of Scandinavia aren’t reachable), and everybody thought at that time that satellite phones would become mainstream products as soon as devices got smaller and cheaper. This vision proved wrong when the GSM concretely came to life in 1990/1991 in Finland.

1G: Firstly, there were analog GSM systems, that existed for a few years. And then came the digital systems.

2G: the second generation of mobile telecommunications still is the most widespread technology in the world; you’ve basically all heard of the GSM norm (GSM stands for Groupe Spécial Mobile in French, renamed in Global System for Mobility). The GSM operates in the 850Mhz. and 1900Mhz. bands in the US, & 900Mhz. and 1.8Mhz. bands in the rest of the world (eg did you know Bluetooth stands in the 2.4Ghz. area, just like your…microwave!? But that’s another story, not related to this article) and delivers data at the slow rate of 9.6 Kbytes/sec.

2.5G: For that last reason (9.6 Kbytes/sec doesn’t allow you to browse the Net or up/download an image), telco operators came up with the GPRS (remember all the hype around the Wap) which could enable much faster communications (115Kbytes.sec). But the market decided it was still not enough compared to what they had at home.

2.75G: EDGE (I just called it 2.75G, 2.5′s not the official or unofficial number at all), which is a pretty recent standard, allows for downloading faster. Since mobile devices have become both a TV and a ‘walkman’ or music player, people needed to be able to watch streaming video and download mp3 files faster – that’s precisely what EDGE allows for and that’s for the good news. The bad news is that if EDGE rocks at downloading, it’s protocol is asymmetrical hence making EDGE suck at uploading ie broadcasting videos of yours for instance. Still an interesting achievement thanks to which data packets can effectively reach 180kbytes/sec. EDGE is now widely being used.

3G: also called UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard). Aimed at enabling long expected videoconferencing, although nobody seems to actually use it (do you know any?). Its other name is 3GSM, which says literally that UMTS is 3 times better than GSM. One issue though: depending on the deployment level of the area you are in and your device, your phone will (have to be) handle(d) from the GSM network to the UMTS network, and conversely – making billing more complex to understand for the consumers. One of the major positive points of UMTS is its global roaming capabilities (roaming is the process that allows you, at a cost, to borrow bandwidth from a telco provider that’s not yours; you usually use roaming when calling from abroad).

3.5G or 3G+: HSDPA is theoretically 6 times faster than UMTS (up to 3.6 Mbytes/sec)! Practically speaking, this would mean downloading an mp3 file would take about 30 secs instead of something like 2 minutes. Not bad, uh?

4G: still a research lab standard, at least to my knowledge, that should combine the best of cellphone network technologies with WiMax, wireless Internet, voice over IP and IPv6 (a post about the latter soon). Data rates are expected to reach 100 Mbytes/sec.

So John, I hope this helps. I know it’s not detailed at all, but it should be enough at first to make your son’s cellphones shop potential customers understand what lies behind the different technologies. Even though you’re not an industrialist (ie working at a telco operator or a consumer electronic company building cellphones), I strongly recommend you watch what goes on in Asia in general (Japan, Singapore, Mauritius even though it’s in Africa, the Philippines, South Korea) and Finland on top of the US to get updates about what’s actually going onwhere it all happens in the mobile telecommunications industry.

Europe's contribution to the Internet

Jeremy Fain — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:38:34 +0000

When it comes to Internet technologies, it looks as if Europe’s excellent at inventing, but sucks at innovating (ie bringing inventions to the masses). Here’s a little compilation drawn from recent readings (mainly this week’s issue of Business Week) and thoughts.

It wasn’t Dick Cheney who invented the Internet browsing interface World Wide Web (www), but it was made up in Geneva and appropriated later by Silicon Valley.

Digital music standard MP3 was invented in Germany, within one of the 56 research partner institutes of the Fraunhofer Society. The Germans invented MP3, but the Americans reaped the benefits of this invention through the Bell Labs (Silicon Valley again) and later Alcatel-Lucent who now owns the Bell Labs’ intellectual property.

Some of the hottest services going through the Internet are European: Skype was born in Luxembourg, from a truly European team, and bought by eBay in 2005 for a mere bn$2,6; MySQL, an easy-to-use and extremely well packaged database, was born in Sweden; FON is a Spanish initiative aiming at enhancing the use of wireless hotspots through a community of people willing to share their resources; Last.fm has put together social networking and music to become a leader; and the list could be countless…However, it’s no surprise if Skype was bought by eBay, and Kelkoo by Yahoo!

Europe has a hard time building sustainable world leaders on the Internet as well as making its inventions go from the research lab to the mass market. Can you think of a reason why all leading Internet companies are American and not Asian (yet) or European (yet)?

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Email address change, and more

Jeremy Fain — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:11:18 +0000

For those of you who with I regularly exchange e-mails (there are many amongst my readers, and you know I enjoy these interactions a lot), please update your Outlook contact list. My jeremy.fain [ AT ] mailhec [ DOT ] net address will be closed as soon as I graduate (end of June), so here are my new contact details starting from today:

Bonus info

Left Picture: this is my building on campus at Ecole Centrale Paris, picture taken yesterday (cloudy day) / Right picture: from my windows the day before yesterday (a beautiful day in Southern Paris)

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Everything you need to know about Wimax

Jeremy Fain — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 23:12:47 +0000

I’ve been asked a few times recently what Wimax is (since the press uses the word without explaining anything), and have never been more accurate than “well, it’s the next generation of wireless connections for both cellphones and wireless Internet”.

I decided to browse the Internet fishing for deeper stuff, delve a little further into the details to write a short post about what Wimax really is from a more technical viewpoint.

So what is Wimax?

Wimax is a new large bandwidth hertzian data transmission technology
Wimax = worldwide interoperability for microwave access
The Wimax standard has been devised by theWimax forum (over 200 organizations amongst which telco manufacturers, telco operators, regulators, research institutions, etc.)
As all telecommunication norms, Wimax is made by a set of standards (this first of these numbered 802.16a was validated by the IEEE in 2002)
Frequency bandwidth: between 2 and 11 Ghz (2 to 6 Ghz in mobile transmission mode)
Current debit: 12Mbits/sec. over 20 kilometers (about 13 miles) for landline communications (norm 802.16d); mobile communications (norm 802.16e): 30Mbits over 3 kilometers (about 2 miles)

Why Wimax?

To at last enable VoIP – Internet – streaming video on a mobile device
To reach geographically isolated places at a rather low infrastructure cost and hence helping reduce ‘the digital gap’; what you basically need to transmit radio wavelength is a foot long (30 centimeters) antenna and a base station located in the transmission range area
Guaranteed quality making professional videoconferencing more likely to happen in remote conditions

The technologies behind Wimax

OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing); consequence vs. a regular wireless connection: twice as many data per Hertz are transferred
Canal width: 1,75 to 20 Mhz
The above-mentioned antenna raises the issue of line of sigh. Thanks to the OFDM modulation: Line Of Sight (LOS) between 10 and 66Ghz., Not Line Of Sight (NLOS) between 2 and 11Ghz.)

Who is to push Wimax?

Intel is the number one promoter of Wimax, often presenting it as the “wireless DSL”
One may also think of Samsung, Nokia, France Telecom, Microsoft and CISCO as companies really pushing Wimax to the forefront of the stage

Wimax vs. regular Wireless Internet

Regular wireless Internet suffers 2 major shortcomings when compared to Wimax:

In regular wireless connections (wifi), data may be lost (ie VoIP when your bandwidth is small) when packets collide and traffic increases. This is not due to happen in Wimax as bandwidth is due to be granted on demand, according the your actual needs
Wimax is faster, more secure (data integrity), and most of all no pain of having to sit next to a hotspot

However, Wimax and wireless Internet do not necessarily compete and may operate together. Indeed, a Wimax transportation and collection network may well be used as an ISP or telco operator backbone to connect WiFi hotspots, although Wimax hotspots (delivery networks) are also likely to emerge and develop.

Deployment/democratization constrains

Wimax licenses are granted by your country telecom regulation institution (eg. ARCEP in France), hence a rather slow development
Wimax terminals are relatively expensive, not anyone can afford it as of today (between 100$ for a PC Card up to 300$ for a client terminal)
Telco operators, when arbitraging between installing fiber optics or pushing Wimax, usually go for the former which benefits from greater market traction as of today

In a nutshell

Fast mobile communications, at last!
Wimax isn’t quite a technological revolution but rather an evolutionary innovation that makes uses best of proven technologies such as radio wavelength and OFDM.
Top-notch multinational companies support the standard (eg Intel)
Interoperability with existing standards (eg Wireless Internet or WiFi)

My call: Wimax integrates many proven technologies in the field of telecommunications, hence an unexisting technical risk, which should enhance market adoption both by corporate accounts and people like you and me. However, in order to become a standard rather than remaining a mere norm, Wimax has to pick up quickly as 3G and 4G are getting buzzier and buzzier.

Hope this briefing helps!