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There is actually a way to do diffserv that is consistent with the end-to-end principle, at least I think it is.

The idea is that you pay your ISP for a right to send at a certain nominal bandwidth. If you send faster, your packets will be marked with lower priority. At the network's core routers the lower priority packets will be dropped if congestion occurs.

This idea is called SIMA. You can learn more about it at http://www-nrc.nokia.com/sima/.

(I have no relation to them. I just know these guys and really think they've come up with something useful.)

I fully agree with you here. I've tried a Palm V after using an HP100LX/HP200LX for years but not having a keyboard is too much of a disadvantage for me.

I now own a Nokia 9110 Communicator, a smart phone with a keyboard (even tinier than the HP), but I dread the day when the keyboard devices will disappear from the market. Each input method has it's advantages, but I fear that kbd may disappear mainly because they aren't fashionable anymore.

Regards,
Xenna

Nokia has a press release up which says they are going to sell AT&T a GSM/EDGE/UTMS system, but it is at 1900MHz, same as the current US GSM. It does GPRS as well.

Have a look here for more info...

So no, I can tell you that isn't as big as a lunchbox, doesn't look like a 50's style toaster, and, in fact, looks more functional than the Nokia Communicator, which up to this moment was my personal choice for best mobile phone ever. Very neat.

In fact this is half-way to what I've been predicting for moby phones for quite a while now. If it was me I would move the buttons off the front face (or better, virtualise them) in order to make more room for the display, and orient the dislay landscape rather rather than portrait, but... looks very usable. Not certain I believe in a colour display on a portable device, though -- eats too much battery.

MPPC - Microsoft Point-To-Point Compression

GSM - Global Standard for Mobile commnications (this one runs at 1800mhz, pretty standard, used throughout the world... with the notable absence of one country.)

HSCSD - High Speed Circuit Switched Data (this is a little like GRPS, however it's point-to-point based and provides more bandwidth than packet switched GPRS, but it isn't connected 24/7)

GRPS - General Packet Radio Service, (always on, packet based mobile network, ip based).

ASDF - Association of Synchronous Data Formats (the synchronous carrier format to provide a level of QoS and ensure delivery.)

LMNOP - ?? got me on that one, sounds like some protocol for binding ip to the wireless standard.

You're moaning about a non-US company launching it's products outside of the US?

Simple really. Nokia's a Finnish company (that's in Europe ;-), so they launch in Europe first. When it comes to mobile's, you grand old Americans have got the slightly unusual 1900 frequency instead of the 1800 and 900 used in a hell of a lot more countries.

DVD players, you got those first. Games consoles, correct me if I'm wrong, but you got those in October didn't you? They don't launch in the UK till friday (I'm guessing that's a simultaneous european launch.) TiVo, Replay, you got that first. Massive Rear project TV's... there's a lot more of them in the US then anywhere else. HDTV?

Personally, it's nice to know the US doesn't get everything first.

I am pissed off that I can't buy one of those cool phones (Nokia 8110) from The Matrix. Why doesn't Nokia sell them?? I would imagine that LOTS of people want them.

I'm going to start an armed insurrection.

For those that are considering the Nokia Communicator as a handheld computer for connected/mobile use (and I know of one friend that used the first model very successfully for that), the Nokia Phone Card may be a better proposition.

Being just a PCMCIA type II card which will plug into anything, including potentially Linux machines, this doesn't tie you to the phone manufacturer's idea of what a portable computer or PDA should look like. All we need now is a PCMCIA slot in a Palm. :-)

Why bother?

As far as I'm aware digital mobile phone communications are encrypted with something like RSA-64 anyway. It's possible to intercept analogue communications, but in the UK these are not really used anymore (at least in cellular comms.)

And with the way dist.net is going, I dont think the RC5-64's going to be broken in the time a normal phone call lasts. Sure, your governing body of choice may have access to the exchanges (court-order wiretaps etc) but that's the law when it comes to most personal communications.

Although I think the Nokia unit in the spotlight here is just eyecandy, or at least proof-of-concept. Like someone mentioned before, I'd much rather take out a Palm Vx and a Nokia 8850 than one of these anyday.

Or the Palm Vc when it comes out ... mmmmmm :)

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

...another comment from Michael Tandy.

• Later this week, Nokia will be introducing a new mobile phone that not only has the now-standard built-in Tetris game and GPS receiver, but also wireless voice-over-IP support and a built-in webcam for videoconferencing! (A friend of mine works on this project, which is how I know about it.)
• Also this week (I know, funny coincidence, but everyone's trying to get their new products out in time for the Xmas shopping season), Oster will be introducing new microwave ovens, toasters, and blenders with built-in Ethernet interfaces and firmware support for the new Linux Open-Source Kitchen Automation project (I forget the URL, but it's hosted at SourceForge). These devices will allow you to program and monitor your kitchen devices over your home LAN. They also have built-in webcams so you can watch your kitchen in action, from a much more intimate viewpoint than has ever before been possible (in the case of the blender, the cam actually views up from beneath the whirling blades).
• And speaking of intimate viewpoints, Symbian will shortly be introducing a new vibrator with a webcam built into the tip. Configure it with an URL to upload images to, and watch it go in and out, in and out...
• Lastly, Web monitoring company Keynote will be entering the consumer hardware business with a new PCI add-in board for better DIY monitoring of your own website. Just plug it in and the onboard webcam shows you the packets going in and out through your network interface.

I seem to remember that, as well. If you drop the focus on PalmOS, then there are several combined phones and PDAs out there. The most known one is the (semi-ancient, but recently software-upgraded) Nokia 9110i, and the brand-spanking-new Ericsson R380. These are GSM phones, of course...

Also, 380kbps is coming and as soon as that happens, applications will want all the features that TCP/IP provides.

Other than that, you're dead on.

Of course the proprietary 5nine.net solution might be workable (couldn't see a download though.)

This article really left me thinking, though. How could I get free advertisment for my closed-source product on Slashdot... yeah! Now I know. I'll write a introductory article to a opinions website and link it to my product, then email CmdrTaco!

Presto!

DVB is COFDM (coded orthagonal frequency division multiplexing). Search Google for more information than you could possibly want on this format. But I'll give some here for the sake of information (no, not karma :) :

As you might know, some broadcasters have raised issues with the 8-VSB standard presently in use in the US, claiming that it does not preform suffieiently well under multipath conditions such as the inner city that residents would instead opt for cable or satellite services (it would typically be either that or getting up and readjusting the antenna every time you changed a channel). They also claim that mobile reception (i.e., walking down a sidewalk watching TV or receiving data on, e.g., the next Palm, or tuning in while on the road) is significantly more reliable with COFDM-based systems such as DVB than the 8-VSB system is (although NxtWave claimed that they could solve this problem; however nothing has come yet, and COFDM by design can naturally cope with these situations well anyway; those better informed than I can fill in here). Independant and hopefully objective tests are currently in progress in and around the Washington, D.C. metropoliton area to substantiate these claims.

This is yet another device that uses the DVB standard (which, BTW, is the standard in all but about 4 (?) other countries currently in transition to digital television; or in some cases a slightly modified standard is used). Another, also mentioned elsewhere in these comments, is the Nokia Mediascreen, a arm-held (a bit too big for hand-held) 12" TFT-display DVB reciever plus GSM phone access plus SMS plus Internet (and running Linux). I have used^H^H^H^Hplayed around with a prototype, and even if nothing else, it's cool enough to justify changing the standard just so the Europeans can't keep it for themselves :) .

At the present, Nokia DVB products run Linux. Europeans and others privalaged with DVB television systems please show your support with your wallets (i.e., grab your Mediascreen as soon as it comes out), and US citizens... well we'll just have to wait and see how Congress reacts to the data gathered during the D.C. testing.

In case you're wondering,

Funny about the Linux line... Hehehe.

I'm not sure if I mind Nokia's entrance into these fields. The common theme seems to be that they simply repackage normal computers, running unix, into appliance-type boxes. I'm curious to see what other applications they come up with.

I wouldn't mind one of their Mediascreens for the car, for roadtrips!

"It will be available in the market in the 2nd quarter 2001", according to this press release on the Nokia site. No price is given.

What a sweet looking device. Long live Nokia!

Of course, at $1K for the phone itself, plus probably $200/month for all the services needed to make it worth having, I won't junk my Palm Vx any time soon. Especially since I'm still hoping for CPDP service in my area. Not that I'm holding my breath for that -- there's every indication that pocket-network developers are abandoning PDAs in favor of augmented cell phones, like this puppy. For example, Paypal has discontinued their popular Palm app in favor of phone-based apps.

You can do this, I use my Nokia 9110 phone all the time for telnet and vnc into our systems at work. Also has an SSL-capable browser, IMAP4 and POP3 clients, ftp, .wav recorder, etc.

Here in Finland (home of Nokia :) many people like getting a new phone every year, though added features may only be looks and candy, such as the game nibbles.

However, with the advent of GPRS (and maybe UMTS some day :/ ) there will be a huge market for cell phones in the coming years as well. True mobile IP, that's my kind of candy. 8-)

--

Those of us who're old enough may remember GEOS on the C-64, C-128 and Apple II from Berkeley Softworks, back in the '80s. BSW became GeoWorks around 1990, and sold the OS and app suites based on it for a few years, as well as selling it for PDA's like the Tandy/Casio/Sharp "Zoomer" and some HP OmniGo models.

Around the mid-'90s, GeoWorks focused more on smart phones (the Nokia 9000 family of smart phones run GEOS), and desktop stuff was taken over by New Deal, Inc..

On the x86 platform, GEOS offered pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, and object-oriented design (coded in something resembling Objective C, if I recall from the days when I had the SDK and developer docs, and in assembler) - and it did this a full five years ahead of Windows 95. In 1990, it had shared UI code for all apps, like GNOME and KDE are now doing.

It was also very fast as a platform - it was originally designed to run on an 8086 with 640K, and even the most recent versions are quite happy on a '286 with a meg or two. On anything "recent" in the way of a CPU, it should outperform just about anything - unless, of course, it's loading stuff over a dialup...

--

I don't need an extra modem: my Palm IIIx connects seamlessly by IR to my GSM mobile (a Nokia 8210, really tiny great thing). OK, it's 9600bps but I can get my mail in the train.

Browsing is slow, although I can access WAP sites that are a little bit faster but scarce in content. And GSM mobiles work almost everywhere in the world, except in the USA of course :( OK, I know there's tri-band mobiles that work everywhere available from Motorola, but that's another story.

Considering the power and memory available on Palm PDAs, I think 9600bps (or 14.400 in rare cases) are quite enough to send or receive email. If you need more, get a laptop. It'll still work with the mobile phone as a modem and there's great chances you'll have a regular modem in it. Or just wait for the 3G phones, it'll be 2MB/s...

Now, I'd love to see those Palm/phone hybrids from Kyocera that are on the US market only 'cause they don't do GSM (only CDMA) OTOH, I like having the choice between having a tiny mobile (79g only) that fits anywhere and the full geek gear (a Palm III is quite bulky, can't wait getting a Vx!).

In other words, why would somebody want a *real* modem in a Palm, when usually you got the mobile ready for the task, with no cable/hassle with it? OK, here everyone has a mobile and all Palm owners I know also have a mobile, since they pretty much fit together in a standard geek logic.

.max

Couldn't agree more about WAP...

But I have got a lot of use out of this Nokia gizmo.

It's about three years old, resembles a housebrick, and data connections are slow and relatively expensive.

Handy for tech stuff (often server admin) on the move, as it supports Telnet, FTP, HTTP, POP3, and SMTP. Just installed a VNC client on it too... ;-)

Not incredibly practical, but sometimes bloody useful.
I don't know whether they're going to develop the phone much further, because models these days have to be about the size of a box of matches, come with sixty lurid snap-on covers, and have a gazillion annoying ring-tones... ;-)

MYTH: Mobile phones are so powerful they literally fry your brain. FACT: Mobile phone safety standards are set to minimize heating in the brain to fractions of a degree - less than that which results from normal physical exercise. MYTH: The incidence of brain tumors is rising because of mobile phone usage. FACT: World recognized authorities have not found any link between mobile phone usage and health risks. MYTH: Using a mobile phone gives the user headaches. FACT: The causes of headaches are numerous. There's no evidence of a direct link between mobile phone usage and headaches. MYTH: Nobody is really investigating the possible health dangers associated with mobile phone usage. FACT: In excess of USD 50 million has been spent on EMF research. In addition to the research program through Wireless Technology Research (WTR) in the U.S., the WHO runs an EMF project. The European Commission is also planning funding of EMF research under its 5th framework program.

According to highly-renowned international bodies like the World Health Organization (WHO): "Current scientific evidence indicates that exposure to low levels of RF (Radio Freaquency) fields, including those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers." (Source WHO Fact Sheet 193 May 1998.)

Regardless, everyone can use a headset.

Here's a good summary (with more links) on mobile phone safety

__________________________________________

I live in the UK. It's amazing how the popularity of things like SMS (Short Messaging Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and 3G (Third Generation Phones) differ between countries (i.e. USA, Europe and Japan). Although my old phone didn't have predictive text input, it was a key factor in organizing my social life.
Everyone I know organizes nights out using SMS. This is why people aren't doing this type of thing on a Palm Pilot - It's kind of inconvenient to pull out your PalmV while at a nightclub and start `writing' on it - and besides, a few people i know can type SMS's quicker than they can write.
SMS messages are also a good (free) way of communicating with my friend who's in the Canary Islands right now. For me and my friends, SMS will continue to be an important means of communication (until the UK gets fast/reliable/cheep or free WAP or Third Generation phones). Even then SMS will probably still have its place, just like some people still using pagers.

I live in the UK. It's amazing how the popularity of things like SMS (Short Messaging Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and 3G (Third Generation Phones) differ between countries (i.e. USA, Europe and Japan). Although my old phone didn't have predictive text input, it was a key factor in organizing my social life.
Everyone I know organizes nights out using SMS. This is why people aren't doing this type of thing on a Palm Pilot - It's kind of inconvenient to pull out your PalmV while at a nightclub and start `writing' on it - and besides, a few people i know can type SMS's quicker than they can write.
SMS messages are also a good (free) way of communicating with my friend who's in the Canary Islands right now. For me and my friends, SMS will continue to be an important means of communication (until the UK gets fast/reliable/cheep or free WAP or Third Generation phones). Even then SMS will probably still have its place, just like some people still using pagers.

I live in the UK. It's amazing how the popularity of things like SMS (Short Messaging Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and 3G (Third Generation Phones) differ between countries (i.e. USA, Europe and Japan). Although my old phone didn't have predictive text input, it was a key factor in organizing my social life.
Everyone I know organizes nights out using SMS. This is why people aren't doing this type of thing on a Palm Pilot - It's kind of inconvenient to pull out your PalmV while at a nightclub and start `writing' on it - and besides, a few people i know can type SMS's quicker than they can write.
SMS messages are also a good (free) way of communicating with my friend who's in the Canary Islands right now. For me and my friends, SMS will continue to be an important means of communication (until the UK gets fast/reliable/cheep or free WAP or Third Generation phones). Even then SMS will probably still have its place, just like some people still using pagers.

I live in the UK. It's amazing how the popularity of things like SMS (Short Messaging Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and 3G (Third Generation Phones) differ between countries (i.e. USA, Europe and Japan). Although my old phone didn't have predictive text input, it was a key factor in organizing my social life.
Everyone I know organizes nights out using SMS. This is why people aren't doing this type of thing on a Palm Pilot - It's kind of inconvenient to pull out your PalmV while at a nightclub and start `writing' on it - and besides, a few people i know can type SMS's quicker than they can write.
SMS messages are also a good (free) way of communicating with my friend who's in the Canary Islands right now. For me and my friends, SMS will continue to be an important means of communication (until the UK gets fast/reliable/cheep or free WAP or Third Generation phones). Even then SMS will probably still have its place, just like some people still using pagers.

Not if you've got a newer phone.
Lots of new phones come with predictive text input which lets you press each key just once, and it predicts what word you're typing based on a built in dictionary. Much quicker.

Text-messaging is great: the US is really missing out. I find it indispensible for several reasons. Firstly its great if you're in a noisy bar or club, where its impossible to hear a phone. Secondly its cheap: i pay £.06p ($.09) per message, as opposed to £.30p/min to call another network mobile.
Lastly, and most importantly, texting is great for flirting. Little mesages that you'd never dream of saying by voice, are somehow easier to say by text!

__________________________________________

Small devices like PDAs, cell phones, wrist watches, alpha two-way pagers, etc. seem to provide a fair amount of challenge and possible room for creativity with 6x6 icons and drop-down menus that take up most of the screen.
--

Haven't tried WAP, but I'm still having a lot of fun with this gizmo (also affectionately known as The Brick).

A friend sent me a link to a VNC client for it, which is amazingly cool for a 29k download!
You still get HTTP, email and Telnet. There are newer models around at the moment, so there are some pretty good deals floating around at the moment (in the UK, certainly).

Just wait for 3rd generation. Of course, 150kbit/sec connections are cool, but look at the cost of running 16 cell phones simultaneously!

Check out Nokia's 3rd Generation Site. Although I can't find the link off hand, I remember reading that its net access should be able to handle about 2.5 megabits/second, which is great for a cellphone or laptop/palmtop connected to it!

According to this site, we can expect to start seeing this around 2001/2002.

It's too little to late. Next generation Mobile Phones will be more like Palms with wireless networking. Right now I'm using Nokia 8210 + Palm V and connect using the infrared interface. I can even browse slashdot, although I will probably have to set up special palm account with minimal interface. Many sites already have AvantGo-ized pages, with minimal tables and graphics.
WAP is horrible to set up, you need no less than NINE parameters to configure WAP service (URL, Connection type, Connection security, Bearer, Dial-up number, IP address, Authentication type, Data cell type, Data speed, User name and Password) (PHEW!) Although many of these are the same for most connections.
J.

Really?

http://www.nokia.com/phones/6250/

And it's been out for a year now, I almost bought one myself. You may, however, be correct in that such phones may not exist for the US market -- the 6250 is GSM 900/1800 only.

Cheers,
-j. (a former Nokia employee, but glad to be out)

It's too little, too late. It's not very userfriendly and it's a kludge on top GSM (or whatever you are using) 3rd generation mobile systems like GPRS are around the corner, and IMHO we (developers) need to focus on them, rather than that horrible kludge the WAP is. Don't waste your time on WAP...
Just my 2c

J.

Nokia USA does sell an older bulkier & heavier GSM 1900 model, the 9000il

Several of my friends and family use a Communicator and it really is an ideal device. I have no idea why Nokia doesn't market it more aggressively in the US. It's really convenient to have fax + phone + Internet completely integrated. I use in to make a PPP connection to my Linux box, login with the builtin telnet client and connect to my other machines via ssh.

Or should I just wait for more WAP products and services to come out?? I r

There is at least one product that I know of, called MAX, from Nokia (check it out here

A little snippet from the Nokia page:

In addition to the portal, Nokia Artus MAX
Platform offers an optional service, MAX
Platform E-mail, that provides access to any
IMAP4, POP3 or SMTP Internet e-mail host via
a WAP supporting device.


I think this answers your question.. maybe?

Everybody can test this portal by using one of these wap toolkits:
Ericsson
Motorola
Nokia
phone.com

I think you might get a new idea of where GEOS is today here

Oh BTW thats a Cell Phone with an OS [/:-)

RCFoC reader Chris Sunseri recently spent three weeks traveling to the roof of the world, Nepal, and while passing through Thailand on the way, he found that their CS Internet is now offering free Internet access to any GSM (cellular) phone user! Register for the service, use the IR ports in your phone and notebook (or purchase a cable to connect them together), and you're on the Internet for the cost of the airtime.

I own a Nokia Communicator PDA/GSM 9110 Phone combination so this is ideal for me (no extra hardware needed).

In case anybody wants to know the details: Just dial 900-937 (No login name, no password) and you're online.

I've never seen anything like this in the western world, let alone a -supposedly- backward country like Thailand.

The reasons I chose Nokia are the interface options and Linux interface (although I almost didn't because of Nokia not supporting Linux well).

There also is a Nokia Card Phone, a PC Card with a GSM phone, although I don't know what it supports.

I feel your pain! I face the same issues at work. If you're really set on taking a laptop, you need to sort out two separate but related issues:

1) Local dial-up access. You really want a service that will give you connectivity in most countries. I use iPass, available through many ISPs, and reliable so far. I've used it at multiple locations in the US and Europe and so far hasn't failed me. It uses Compuserve or SITA/Equant POPs. Many of the numbers support ISDN. Note that you will want a service like this even if you are using a mobile phone.

2) Mobile connectivity. I have used a Nokia 8850 and an Ericsson i888 for mobile data, both are OK. Neither needs a cable, both use the IRDA port. The Nokia is GSM 900/1800 (European and Asian dual band), the Ericsson is GSM 900/1900 (Europe/USA dual band) and is much uglier than the Nokia. (The Nokia has just become available in Euro/US dual band.) Both of the phones feature built in modems, so the only software necessary is a Windows modem config file that takes up about 9k (yes, nine thousand). Other phones with an IR port do not incorporate data hardware, and require a soft modem on the PC. If you have local dial-up, using a mobile phone need not be terribly expensive.

However, you might be better off using Internet Cafes or a landline modem for the most part. Most Internet Cafes will let you set up a dial-up connection. If you're using a landline modem and need to dial out, however, look for a fax machine. Most of them use an RJ11 connector on the end of the cable that plugs into the machine, so with a double ended RJ11 adapter you're in business.

Take as large as possible a memory card for your digital camera, to minimize need for uploads.

Good luck in your travels! Make sure you're ready for multiple possibilities!

The only prob is that I'm not sure whether the US operators will be able to grab these phones at least sometime soon, so might not be usable if the trip is planned to start next week or so.

It's not Microsoft that Palm should see as their major competitor, it's Symbian's EPOC system. Symbian's on a bit of a 'slow burn', but don't lose sight of the fact that all the world's largest cellphone manufacturers are lined up to put EPOC on their next-gen phones and phone/PDA hybrids before the end of this year, or the middle of 2001. While it's obvious to most people that current attempts at integrating cellphones and PDAs haven't been entirely successful (the Nokia 9110i is probably the best, but not entirely satisfactory as either a phone or as a PDA), the advent of devices such as Bluetooth headsets should really change that situation. Imagine something with the form-factor of a Palm Vx, running Symbian's EPOC, talking via Bluetooth to a headset, and via GSM to the phone and data networks, and the possibilities should become apparent... there are a hell of a lot of cellphone users out there; whoever conquers that market is practically guaranteed dominance in the 'traditional' PDA market.

Moterolas are known for their ruggedness.. however, thier phones are quite basic in features.

Speaking of ruggedness, check-out the Nokia 6250! This phone looks like it was designed to be dropped, kicked, thrown, bashed, etc. and keep ticking. This _is_ the phone I need, I hope there are plans to release it in the US soon (currently available in: Europe and Africa, Asia Pacific).