About Mobility

As I have written here before, a couple of texting “records” have happened in my family; at one point my oldest daughter had more than 3K text messages in one month, and more recently my youngest daughter had around 1,300.

This past weekend at soccer, I was talking to a good friend of mine about texting. My friend said…

“…so we had to talk to our daughter — last month her texting count was 19K text messages”

I, having previous experience with daughters and texting said:

“…nah, that’s nothing, my daughters had 1,300 and 3K”

he said:

“no, Enrique, you didn’t understand, I said 19 THOUSAND!!!”

To what I responded…

“what the hell, no way! that’s crazy!”

Wow, 19 thousand messages — that is an average of ~633 (sent and received) messages a day…

That reminds me, have you ever seen my essay Texting and The Evolution of the Thumb?

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As (mobile) technologists we must be aware of and recognize the potential for harm when obvious/weak-patents are granted by the Patent Office. We should be able to trust the patent system, but the system is weak.

In particular I am here writing about the USA patent 6,199,048 (PDF) titled “System and Method for Automatic Access of a Remote Computer over a Network” by NeoMedia which was part of EFF’s Patent Busting Project. I’ve written about NeoMedia back in 2006 and now I find myself once again writing about it.

As a technologist in the field of software and specifically mobile computing, I will say that the patent ‘048 has no merit. And that it is unfortunate that our PTO is weak in understanding the foundations of the web (on which ‘048 is based) and what is obvious vs. non-obvious concepts and variations. The ‘048 patent is totally based on existing Point of Sale (POS) and Web concepts (even for 1999 when it was filed). That an index or key (i.e. code) is entered by hand or scanned and is then mapped by a remote computer and related information is returned, this has existed years before in POS systems. That a URL is returned and used later on for the initiation of a connection to a particular resource on the Internet is at the heart of the Internet and the Web, even before 1999. While I do recognize the inventors’ vision, their claims are or should be invalid due to non-obviousness and prior-art.

It is my personal opinion that honoring this patent is harmful to the industry, and that the EFF while having good intentions failed by initiating a process which gave NeoMedia the opportunity to “strengthen” its position from the PTO perspective, resulting on the narrowing of some of its claims vs. invalidating the patent per-se. That said, the narrowing might turnout to be a success all on its own, as by narrowing the claims it allows for alternative paths or workarounds. At the end patents are about protecting a set of claims, which also is the weaknesses of patents.

I want to point out the fact that the PTO first granted, then invalidated, then narrowed the claims for ‘048 is proof of the PTO’s incompetence and lack of proper expertise thus failing at its duties. You will hear from lawyers that this happens all the time, but it still shows the lack of expertise by the PTO as this specific ‘048 is not rocket science to get.

The community must recognize the harm of granting obvious patents such as ‘048 which is going to be applied in strength by NeoMedia to everything related to digital-to-physical world connections, such as “mobile barcodes” and even potentially to NFC-based interactions; the latter harder to protect as the ‘048 is mainly about barcodes yet it is up to interpretation as the ‘048 does mention “RF”.

This is a serious matter and I predict the ‘048 patent is going to be a heated topic in the future.

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I’m sure that by now you have heard the rumors about IBM potentially buying Sun. Even yesterday Intel CEO says Sun was shopped around (cnet news).

Why is this a significant announcement? And why I think Intel’s CEO is wrong (when he said that Solaris and SPARC will get EOL)?

Well, besides acquiring an iconic and historically-rich company in the Valley when it comes to technology, there are other items of interest:

1. Java licensing - IBM has invested millions if not billions on Java technology. I remember years ago when the company totally committed to Java technology, and even created the San Francisco project on which IBM poured millions of dollars. IBM has its server-side J2EE and Java ME (mobile) technologies and VMs. Most of IBM’s products are Java based. On every Java Specification (JSR) voting cycle IBM always comments on their disagreement when it comes to the current licensing model. But, by acquiring Sun this would mean a long-term strategy on security and millions of dollars saved on a core technology that IBM is dependent on, now and in the future
2. Access to great IP - Sun has a great Intellectual Property (IP) porfolio: from software to hardware. This will put IBM, the already leader in patents and intellectual property, much further ahead than everyone else
3. Solaris and Sun servers (here is where I disagree w/ Intel’s CEO) - Sun has a lot of expertise and robust products from S/W to H/W. The UltraSPARC processor are pretty kick-ass design. Sun equipment and Solaris 10 is certified for telecoms (NEBS and ATCA) — IBM/AIX is not! This would give IBM immediate access to all telecoms; pretty big stuff, don’t you agree?
4. Access to lots of smart people - Sun has lots of smart people, again from S/W to H/W and services
5. Java open source - back to #1 above, IBM might end up (fully) open source Java and related technologies, all under the Eclipse model! This will benefit IBM and the whole community

About about NetBeans? That probably continues but w/o funding/support from IBM — totally community based. OpenOffice on the other hand may have a different story as it doesn’t compete with IBM/Eclipse and is a pretty valuable office-suite, and thus would probably continue under the Eclipse model, meaning with funding/support from IBM. As a matter of fact, all open source projects acquired by IBM from Sun would move to an Eclipse or Apache licensing model.

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A reminder that this evening, Sunday March 15 don’t miss the “Mobile Web Apps & Widgets Meet-Up” at 5:00pm:

• Event: Mobile Web Apps & Widgets Meet-Up “Find out about your chance to win £20,000″
• What: Informational Meeting
• Host: Vodfone/Betavine & OMTP
• Start Time: Sunday, March 15 at 5:00-8:00pm
• Where: Driskill Hotel Bar

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?event.php&eid=56573382794&mid=238ec8G3289174dG3ff128fG7

Or if you don’t use Facebook, just show up.

ceo

After so many years in mobility, 2009 was my first 3GSM/Mobile World Congress. I always wanted to attend, but couldn’t justify the expenses at the time (being a small startup).

It was my first time in Spain as well, “La Madre Patria” as it used to be said in Puerto Rico. Visiting Spain was interesting for me, mainly because of my inheritance implications; was great to see that part.

MWC was for me about business meeting after meeting every day: with partners and potential partners, customers and potential customers and walking the halls for some intelligence gathering of course. Because I was so busy I missed many of the annoucenments and friends and couldn’t blog anything at all during the event (I Twittered a bit tho). I think that it is funny that one can learn more about the event itself by not attending and just reading the news/blogs.

Mobility-wise, I saw a little bit of everything. Product and products, big announcements such as (billions of dollars) LTE-related which will soon shape the future of wireless networks, app stores, WinMo and PalmPre, widgets, partners and competitors, and something that really, really bugged me - a blatant copy cat of the iPhone, BlackBerry and other look-a-like handsets (where is the honor and pride on that?). I did though find a couple of gems; more on this later.

I enjoyed the city very much; no, I loved the city, the people, and the food. We stayed at an apartment right in the middle of Barcelona (see photos below). I really had a blast. I met some of my Mobilists and Twitter friends, some of whom I’ve known virtually for years. And I missed many folks due to my crazy meeting schedule; sorry about that. I also missed many of the activities and parties as well; not enough time to see it all. MWC at night is pretty intense.

I was able to attend the MobileMonday dinner and one or two of the parties (such as the Smaato). I missed the Mobile Peer Awards and the MobileMonday founder’s meeting, and I missed Helen Keegan and Caroline Lewko’s (WIP) events, and many others.

But I was able to visit La Rambla (what an experience, literally), el Puerto Olimpico, La Sagrada Familia (impressive). Got to eat great paella and drank great wine, great coffee too, and got to hang out with my co-workers and friends from ACCESS, and others. The best food I had was at a couple of very small restaurants right in the middle of Barcelona - great tapas and Cataluña food and wine.

By the time I got home on Saturday, I was so exausted that I could sleep for 2 straight days; but I couldn’t! That Saturday was my wife’s birthday for which I cooked something nice for her and then Sunday it was soccer game (daughter) all over again.

Going to MWC of course means pushing your regular schedule back a week+, so this last week after MWC was tough with business stuff + hundreds of emails and thousands of blogs to read (still), with MobileMonday Austin that following Monday (great meeting BTW), so it was not until today, a week later, that I got a chance to write this piece about MWC/Barcelona.

So, in short, it was a great trip and experience, definitely a business/working trip that helped validate many product ideas (Motive), met great people and it was all worth it, business-wise and personally… I hope to be back. Below are some of the few photos I captured. Cheers.

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For those attending Mobile World Congress 2009:

• I would love to meet my (virtual) friends, followers and people who I follow,
• From work perspective, if your company has or will have “end-to-end digital management” needs anywhere in the world from activation to support to management for mobile handsets and 3G-and-4G nomadic devices, I would love to chat with you and explore…
• Send me an email if you can meet.

I will be in Barcelona the whole week. My personal email is enrique dot ortiz at gmail dot com.

Also, if there are any events that you recommend I attend, please let me know too; for example, I believe MobileMonday Barcelona is that Monday.

See you in Barcelona!

ceo

I just updated to Wordpress 2.7 (from 2.5.1). Hooray… It was about time. The new Dashboard is very nice…

On my new book, I explain how to build up great abs…

(OK, ok, I am joking, but my wife had a great hard laugh)

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Source: Datamation/Mike Elgan.

There is a Wall Street Journal article about the Russian academic Igor Panarin who predicts the U.S. will fall apart in 2010…

…and his theory goes like this:

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

With the US disintegrating and be split into 4 major regions like this:

And I say to Mr. Panarin, I think not! And even if the US gets into its worst scenario ever, it won’t be split into regions going to Russia, Canada, Mexico, China and Europe - that is the dumbest theory ever. Unless of course, the split is enforced by Aliens.

ceo

Not only landlines are being replaced by mobile phones, but according to the Annual TeleGeography study of the international voice market, international long-distance calling is also moving to mobile handsets:

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From Re-inventing Management and Management Education (Irving Wladawsky-Berger):

What can a business do to maximize its chances of survival? Foremost is to embrace a culture of innovation. If the environment is going to change, you want to be among the first to anticipate the changes and start preparing for them. A commitment to innovation may not always help your business stay out of serious trouble, but having a good strategy and understanding of your options will help you transform the business and survive.

:

Re-inventing management is one of the most important responsibilities any company needs to undertake to maximize its chances of survival into this future. Re-inventing management education is one of the most important responsibilities of universities to help better prepare future managers for the kind of world they will encounter. These tough challenges will require us to open our minds to new ways of thinking. In the end, that is what innovation is all about.

I agree, re-inventing management can’t wait for academia; companies must identify, attract and nurture their next generation of leaders…

…Executives typically rise up in the organization by being very good operational managers. These management jobs are very tough and getting tougher. Being a good manager takes very hard work, attention to detail and organizational discipline.

The management executives at technology companies, and especially the CEO must not only be good at attention to details, organization and operations but also at technology vision and innovation, for short-term and long-term execution. For this, the CEO must have a great understanding of realistic/achievable short and long-term strategies, but also have a strong CTO who shares the attention to details, organization and operational skills but in addition is a strong technology/business visionary individual; at the end of the day, it is about maintaining competitive advantage and earnings with the help of technology innovation (as well as non-technology innovation).

Related to this see Business, Innovation and Survival (Irving Wladawsky-Berger)

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The Mobile Service Architecture 2 (JSR 249) is the specification that promises making Java ME-based handsets what many of us have been waiting for years: API robust and consistent.

The JSR 249 is now in Public Review phase, and it needs the input from the developer community…

MSA 2 Stack - Input Needed! - Click to Enlarge

Click the image to enlarge. Notice the yellow indicating the area that the Expert Group is asking for input from the developer community. Help the EG prioritize the APIs for the mid-device class (or standard platform); send an email to jsr-249-comments@jcp.org; tell them Enrique sent you…

And as I’ve previous written about on MSA 2, the API is not complete, and the following JSRs that should be considered for inclusion:

• JSR 304: Mobile Telephony API version 2 -or- JSR 253 MTA version 1
• JSR 266: Unified Message Box Access API (UMBA-API)
• JSR 307: Network Mobility and Mobile Data API

Both the MTA and UMBA APIs are in limbo within the JCP, but the JCP should take them out of such limbo-state so the EG can incorporate! You see, while inter-vendor and JCP politics and legality stuff continues to slow things down, platforms such as Android and other continue to move forward.

Download the draft specification from http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=249.

This Public Review closes on 23 February 2009.

ceo

Great article on Obama’s NASA Dilemma (The Technology Review).

“When president-elect Barack Obama takes office in January, he will be faced with a rare situation. Within his first 100 days, he will have to decide the fate of America’s space program.”

:

“As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period,” the document stated. “The [Orion] CEV will be the backbone of future missions, and is being designed with technology that is already proven and available.”

:

“In addition, investing in space exploration could help the next president deliver on promises of creating jobs in high-tech industries during the current economic crisis. “One way to look at the space program in these economic times is that it is a jobs program,” AIAA’s Bell says. “It would be bad to encourage people to go into science and technology and then get rid of one of the agencies that is the primary employer for those types of people.”

My take is that the Space Program is important, as it creates jobs, and expertise and knowledge in science, math and engineering, in operations and other areas, which are all extremely important skills for our future, and which are skills that are applicable beyond the space program itself… A good example close to the readers of this blog is the “deep space Internet” (Disruption-Tolerant Networking) test, a “new” network protocol that was recently tested:

“(DTN is a) …software protocol, which must be able to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space, was designed in partnership with Vint Cerf, a vice president at Internet search giant Google.”

I’m sure some of that innovation on (wireless) network robustness and reliability will be applicable to our own wireless networks here on Earth…

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Left: Ibsen Espada, Right: Cofresí. Source Houston Press

I really believe “artist” is the one of the most difficult jobs in the whole world; and only the best can survive as true artists. People don’t buy paintings all the time, and painters are affected by hard economic times too; people don’t buy art when times are not so good.

The life of an artist is quite different from the life of developer, and at times can be quite glamorous; I’ve seen it, and it is quite amazing (as compared to the life of a developer, ha!), but getting there is very hard, and it is much harder to stay at such level over long periods of time…

So I’ve a great respect for artists who dedicate their life to art…

This is why I’ve a great respect for my first cousin, Ibsen Espada, who is an artist/painter. I’ve seen him in ups and downs, inspired and not inspired. I’ve seen him shine at painting exhibitions (openings nights are awesome), and when times are not so good. I love his art, and I’ve some of his pieces at home. He is an abstract painter.

Ibsen at his Studio

Below is an article about him from 2004 that I found on the Web (Houston Press):

For many artists, opportunity knocks once or twice. For Ibsen Espada, it banged incessantly. The part-time dog catcher was asleep with a hangover on a Saturday morning, in his ramshackle White Oak painting studio, when somebody began pounding on the door. Naked, Espada climbed out of bed, leaving behind a woman he’d met mambo-dancing the previous night, and groggily peeked outside. He saw a face that few struggling Houston artists had ever glimpsed on their doorsteps: the well-coiffed visage of Susie Kalil, guest curator for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Read the rest of the article at No Virgins, No Velvet (Houston Press).

This next painting I like a whole lot:

Welded Dancers

The following two paintings of Ibsen I found for sale at eBay:

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(I totally believe that creating and delivering beautiful software to be an art)