Wireless 2.0

Unfortunately I could only attend the second half of this one-day conference. I missed the keynote from Joe McGeehan and the presentations from Vodafone, Icera and Picochip. Although these were all reported to be very interesting sessions, I was pleased to have caught the presentations by Anders Carlius (TerraNet), Will Franks (Ubiquisys)and Stuart Scott (Intohand).

Anders Carlius described a peer-to-peer mesh communications network that TerraNet have deployed in Ecuador and Kenya. He labelled this as “communications for the last 4 billion” - developing nations where the users may be 60km from roads, power etc. The system makes money from incoming calls (from emigrants to the city calling home). Calls have a 90s maximum duration and the noise level increases as the call continues past 30s!

The TerraNet phone has a three button interfere. The concept of “identity” is built in. To make a call you scroll through your contacts and press “call”. To add a new contact you hold two phones together ("kissing"). This all sounded very carefully thought through to minimise customer care costs.

Will Franks is Founder and CTO of Ubiquisys. Ubiquisys was founded in 2004 and is now a market leader in Femtocells. Google have recently become a significant investor in Uniquisys.

So, what is a femtocell? A 3G network in box. No buttons. Idiot proof. Uses an existing broadband connection as backhaul – good value for operator – no backhaul or power cost. Offers 7Mbit/s in the home to 3G handsets. This can drive 3G phone sales – at last a reason to acquire a 3G phone. Content (audio, video, data) can be transferred to the phone at home and used away from home when (3G) network connectivity may be poor. “Sync at home; consume at will”. Radiated power is very low power in the home – 1 mW – gives very long battery life, decreases heath risks. Voice quality is very good, video performance is excellent.

Everyone I spoke to after Will's presentation wanted to buy a femtocell. But it was a very geeky audience.

Stuart Scott gave the final talk. Intohand are a software house working in the wireless space. Stuart described how grotty things are at the moment, close platforms, poor platforms (Intohand can crash some handsets from their Java sandbox). Stuart made an appeal for downloadable software, to make phones more like PCs. He said we need to have a sequence of connectivity; content creation tools – content will follow; services and mashups - service revenue will follow.

Finally, he made the observation that "The Web" will become "The Mobile Web"; most web access will be from phones.

So, overall an interesting conference. There were a mix of people there, mainstream technology, start-ups and start-ups, entrepreneurs and wanabees, VCs etc. Well done Silicon South West for putting it on.

European Journey: Part III

The final part of my journey was the drive Grenoble to Geneva airport. Normally I leave the office, head across town and take the A41 towards Chambery. Some mapping systems suggest going on the A48 north-west from Grenoble and then taking the A43 to Chambery - this has never seemed entirely sensible to me. However this time, filled with the sense of adventure instilled by my drive across the Alps to Grenoble, I decided to try a more interesting route than normal, driving across the Charteuse to Chambery.

Before talking about the drive, perhaps I should say something about the car. Two weeks prior to this trip I'd made a trip to Grenoble via Geneva as usual. I'd hired a grey (I think the technical term is "silver") VW Golf about which I'd felt very neutral (- can you feel "very neutral"?). This time, I'd swear I got precisely the same car. Certainly it felt comfortingly familiar as I drove out of the airport.

In fact, it felt very quiet and comfortable all the way to Milan. It seemed to hold its own against the maniac lorries of Turin-Milan autostrada. I must admit to a couple of past relationships with VW Golfs. The first was an eight-value Mk II GTI, OK but nothing special. The second was with a bright red, four door, sixteen value GTI. This was the real thing, true love. A great car. Of course, my hire Golf was not in the same league, but it had a recognisable surefootedness. My trip over the Cols would have been unpleasant in any less secure car.

But back to the trip back from Grenoble.... I left the office with plenty enough time to get to Geneva and make my flight - if I went my normal route. Going across the Chartreuse looked like it would also be OK timewise, but you can't be sure, even after consulting both a GPS and Google maps. The weather was fine so I set out to take the interesting route. The route proved to be very pleasant, traffic free most of the way, and through fine countryside. It also only took a fraction longer than my usual route.

From Chambery you can take the autoroute all the way to Geneva. However I nearly always choose, as I did on this occasion, to take the N201 over the Pont de la Caille. Actually, the N201 goes alongside the Pont de la Caille (1839) on a more recent (1939) concrete bridge. It won't be too long before even the new bridge loses most of its traffic. There is a new section of autoroute being constructed follows approximately the same route as the N201 - except partly underground. The construction involves building a new bridge and a big new tunnel - impressive civil engineering.

So, after driving about 900 km, I returned the car at the airport and headed home.

European Journey: Part II

In my previous post, I said that normally I travel from Milan to Grenoble by car. I had made the journey a few times a prior this trip, and I knew that when you follow the obvious route - Turin, Féjus Tunnel, A43 and then A41 to Grenoble, the journey takes between four and five hours - depending on the traffic on the Turin ring road. This time, as I was travelling in high summer this, I decided that I would go a different, longer, more scenic route - if I had time. My idea was to go over the Mont Cenis pass (2,082m), then over the Col de L'Iseran (2770m), down past Val d'Isère, Bourg St Maurice, Moutiers and thence Grenoble. I thought this would take about six hours, although with mountain passes you can never be sure.

I left my morning meeting at about two-thirty; by three o'clock I was sitting in my hire car, talking myself into taking the long route. The weather in Milan was good, and the clouds over the mountains didn't look too bad.

The start of the journey ran westward along the Milan-Turin road - horrible as expected. The Turin traffic was bad and I didn't reach the A32 towards France until later than I had anticipated. The weather was also a little worse than it had been in Milan. However, as I couldn't see myself getting the opportunity to drive over the Alps in summer again, I decided to press on.

The SS25 was a good fun drive, my destination was not always clearly signposted so I was pleased I had my gps with me. The only memorable point before the Italian-French border was the Bar Cenisio. The border itself was unremarkable and unmanned. The road up the Lac do Mon Cenis was populated by keen cyclists.

Then the lake. There were very few people around; I'm sure if I did the journey a month later the area would have been packed with tourists but the end of June certainly wasn't high season. From the lake I drove on to Lanslebourg-Mont-Cenis from where there is an alternative, shorter route to Grenoble via Modane and the A43. The weather was beginning to look cloudy and there were warning about various road closures but I chose not to be seduced by Modane.

There were lots of roadworks as I climbed up to the pass. The road had only opened for the summer three weeks previously and it was evidently the time to repair the winter's damage. The temperature fell and the weather deteriorated as I climbed. At the top it was misty, snowing and subzero. I was very disappointed I couldn't see much - visibility was much worse than my photo suggests - I had been looking forward to comparing the Col in summer with the one I know from skiing there.

From the col I headed down towards Val d'Isère. The gps told me to go back down the way I'd just come up, trying to persuade me to do a U-turn as I drove down the blue piste - well road, but it is a blue piste in winder. Before long things improved, the gps came to its senses and the visibility improved. This is what I had wanted, seeing the pistes covered in grass, with the lifts looking very out of place.

I drove into into town to take a look at the Solaise bumps and La Face (above). La Face looked very lush. There was a lot of construction work going on, perhaps in preparation for the World Championships in 2009.

From Val d'Isère I drove past the ski resorts of Les Arcs, La Plagne, Les Trois Valleys. The roads seemed better than when I was last in the area, and there were certainly at lot less cars than in the winter. I was only overtaken once by a mad-man on a blind bend. Moutiers to Grenoble was straightforward and mundane, excellent roads and autoroutes. I made it to my hotel in time to have dinner before ten.

European Journey: Part I

As my regular reader will know, I frequently travel to Grenoble on business. I normally fly from Bristol to Geneva, hire a car and drive to Grenoble. I've made this journey many times and it has become quite routine. The only unknown is where I'll stay in Grenoble. There is quite high pressure on hotel rooms and unless the trip is set up well in advance getting a room is a bit of a lottery.

I was all set to make one of these routine trips when my presence was requested at a meeting just outside Milan on the first day that I was supposed to be in Grenoble. What to do? I could rearrange my travel to fly to Milan instead of Geneva, but however I got to Milan, I would have to drive from Milan to Grenoble. Well, have may be too strong a word, but in practice driving is the best option. Anyhow, I decided that as I was travelling in high summer and the days were long, I'd keep my flights as organised, and drive from Geneva to Milan.

The route is pretty straightforward as shown on the map below:

From Geneva you take the Autoroute Blanche to the Mont Blanc tunnel. Then you go through the tunnel, through the Aosta Valley and intersect the main Turin to Milan road west of Turin. A pleasant drive through the Alps. A perfect way to spend a summer evening.

When I reached Geneva it was raining and miserable. It rained all the way to the Mont Blanc tunnel. And then it rained on the other side of the tunnel. But the weather did improve as I drive down the Aosta valley and the remainder of the drive was dry. Fortunately.

I say fortunately because the autostrada between Turin and Milan is one of my least favourite roads. It's in the process of being upgraded up the moment, but the non-upgraded parts are the narrowest three-lane carriageway I've encountered. I'm convinced that the road was constructed with just two lanes in each direction, and was upgraded to three lanes by simply changing the lane markings. Overtaking other cars is OK, but overtaking a goods vehicle is interesting. I don't like to think about driving it in the rain.

Lost

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been planning to blog about my trip through Europe last week. However, this evening, when looking for my trusty gps, so that I could download the logs, I couldn't find it. I hope it's in my laptop bag, at my office. If not, I think I left it in my hire car at Geneva airport. I hope I don't have to try Avis's lost property service.

I also lost my MP3 player today.

Maemo Mapper

Maemo Mapper is possibly the best crafted piece of software I've used in ages, and I don't just mean N800 software. Not quite sure how to describe it. It can be used as if it were just a front end to Google Maps or Virtual Earth. It can be used with a bluetooth GPS to show current position and to record maps. But you say, surely when your driving around, your not connected to the net. Well, certainly I'm not, but MM will cache away maps it's already downloaded and reuse these.

The application uses the N800 wonderfully. According to its author, the application has been written from the ground up for the N770/N800 display and for the processor power and memory available. You can see the benefit. I've only encountered one bug/misfeature; the "downloading file" appears even when not connected to the net - and stays there stuck in this case. Otherwise, 10/10.

More Medion 8818 stuff

The Christmas break has been like the curate's egg as far as the new PC goes.

I successfully wrote my first DVDs - I discovered that my DVD player seems to read both +R and -R sucessfully.

However, I had more fun when it came to burning a CD from an ISO. This has caused me fun and games over the years; I do it infrequently and used to forget how to do it. Surely it's easy with Nero, I thought. But Nero didn't like trying to use a .cue file; it seemed like there was something missing from Nero, or whatever. I tried updating on-line and that didn't work - indeed Nero complained that it couldn't connect to the internet properly. (Subsequently I have decided that this was due to some behaviour of the Bullguard anti-malware. See below). So, I downloaded the newest Nero from the Nero website and installed it. The new version worked just fine but what should have been a really straighforward process took ages.

Then came the real problem. I was trying to add a collection of UK contour maps into my Garmin Mapsource installation. This requires editing the registry. To cut a very long story short, I ended up deciding that I'd messed things up so badly I'd better put the PC back into its delivery state and start again.

The recover procedure worked pretty well. I've now backed up the key recovery files onto DVDs, so I'm safer than I was. It's taken about a day to get things back to a pretty much full installation. I'm just missing my Garmin installation, which I've decided to leave until last. Nero caused some issues. The orginal installation worked fine but there does seem to be some problem with Nero and Bullguard; I ended up disabling the firewall while Nero was installing and then all went well.

In conclusion. Firstly, be very careful editting the registry (but you knew that). Secondly, Nero and Bullguard have a problem with their relationship. Thirdly, I was impressed by the reinstallation process that Medion supplied.