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Interface Builder is fairly bizarre, but it starts to make sense after a while. It does. Really.

My primary reference for iPhone development has been Erica Sadun's book, but I may pick this one up too.

BTW: people may bitch about code signing, but Apple gave me my signature when I asked for it. This is minor compared with what was necessary when my employers wanted to do Brew development. I considered going the jailbreak route, but ended up not doing so.

...laura

OTOH, future cellular devices might incorporate enough improvements into power efficiency (e.g., e-ink displays), such that you could significantly extend battery life and perhaps even power a very basic subset of the phone when the battery runs out.

IMO, future cellular devices will probably use something based on IMOD display technology. It has all the power benefits of e-ink, but considerably faster switching. They're also already available, albeit at pretty small sizes. There's also color versions of these IMOD displays avaliable, but they also suffer from the current size problems.

The Wikipedia article is somewhat short on the details, so the Qualcomm PR page is here. Like I said, it's really a PR page trying to promote their solution, but the whitepapers do have some interesting information on how it all works.

...running J2ME
...running BREW

I've worked with Brew, and it's very similar: any idiot can download and play with the SDK, but to run an app on a real device, even if only for testing, you need to jump through hoops to get licenses. Which is just about impossible to do if you're not with a company. As a result, there is zero hobbyist use of Brew. A shame; you can do cool stuff with it.

I've downloaded the iPhone SDK and played with it. I can think of a number of applications I'd like to write for my iPod Touch, and hope some day Apple will accept me as a developer so I can do so. Or come up with some other way to make it possible. It seems counter-productive to hype the SDK, but then clamp down so hard on actually being able to do anything with it.

...laura

http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2006/061113_brings_broadband_mobility.html

Obviously an idea from a company who wants to sell more expensive chips.

What do we really want from our mobile devices? I want "infinite battery life" and no recharging.

Moore's Law (which is really an increase in the number of transistors per given area) could give us much much better battery life for the same performance, IF we don't go the way of the desktop and squander it on bloated software and eye-candy.

There are already displays which take almost no power (less than 1mW): http://www.qualcomm.com/technology/imod// Add in ultra-wideband, which today can already transmit enough data for HDTV while generating barely more power than background noise (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-WideBand/), and you have seriously useful devices which take almost no power.

As the same number of transistors take up less space, less power, and run faster, we could eventually get to reasonably powerful devices which recharge like solar powered calculators, or from movement, like a self-winding watch. Now THAT would be news!

Who on earth needs a skillset like that?

Then, he will scoop up all of the unemployable engineers at slave labor wages, laughing the entire time while sitting atop his throne made of golden skulls. In fact, this article was probably penned while he sat atop said throne.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

I don't think it will challenge TV-sized media applications anytime soon due to the infrastructure and backplane developement that still needs to be done. On the small scale it would have to compete with electrowetting and e-ink based displays. This technology may provide a very cost-effective solution (no pun intended) for large-scale display applications.

I wonder how tightly the magnetic field needs to be controlled to maintain color accuracy as well as how closely the pixels can be placed together without the field changes in one pixel affecting those adjacent.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?

Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.

Which is why they'll move to IPv6. There aren't enough private IPv4 addresses available, and they can't expand their customer base using IPv4.

http://www.qualcomm.com/qis/qchat/

"It forms a call by combining separate point-to-point connections between each IP endpoint at a managing entity known as the QChat Applications Server, deployed on the carrier's IP Wide Area Network (WAN.)"

I don't know that there are to many companies that write apps for phones directly. The iPhone is not Qualcommm Brew but look at the number of Brew developers in comparison. I don't see many enterprises in this list. It is just a great deal of BS to say this. http://brew.qualcomm.com/brew/en/developer/directo ry.html

Grrr... wrong link in paste buffer... take 2...

Even funnier after that comment is the Eudora is basing new releases on Thunderbird...

http://www.qualcomm.com/press/releases/2006/061011 _project_collaboration_mozilla.html

There is a display under development which I consider practically ideal.
Unfortunately, it's still under development!
But here's a link that explains it: http://www.qualcomm.com/technology/imod/index.html

What you have to do is migrate in a series of stages. First you configure your desktop Outlook clients to listen to a POP3 server. Then you set up a new mail server with something like exim and qpopper. Then you reconfigure Outlook to send via SMTP. Then you turn off the Exchange server altogether. Then you migrate your desktops from Outlook on Windows to Thunderbird on Windows. Then to Thunderbird on GNU/Linux.

Corporate internal web application developers will simply have to learn to cope with non-IE browsers. That will happen when there's a demand for it (which will be soon; Microsoft can't fool everyone forever). Firefox is particularly good to test against, as it runs on both Windows and GNU/Linux.

Qualcomm wants to control video on mobile devices.
http://www.qualcomm.com/mediaflo/index.shtml

That's why they spent so much time and money ..er..'convincing' regulators
to allow them to take over part of the spectrum for mobile video transmission.
Verizon and other carriers want this so they can move video off of their
digital voice lines and on to something parallel with a different infrastructure.
An infrastructure that, no doubt, the carriers will recieve loads of federal funding
to complete (even though it won't be opened up to benefit anyone but Qualcomm financially).

I don't think this loss is much of a blow to them really. They have many other chip
monopolies to exploit.

I agree that neither LCD nor Plasma is enough better than the old-fashioned CRT that I would want to replace mine with one of those. The main thing against them is "pixel size"; the smallest possible pixel on a modern CRT allows it to easily and cleanly support a huge list of different screen-resolutions, while the pixels of LCD and plasma units are so much larger that they can only cleanly support a very limited list --else the image just plain looks ugly. So I'm waiting for flat-screen technology to advance to the point where pixel size has shrunk to roughly the same size that a CRT can do. So far as I know, the closest contender for that, still under development, is this one.

If only there was a windows based Outlook Replacement. (Evolution looks perfect but on win32 it's just not ready.) Thunderbird needs a bigger staff. Google, can we get a little help?

Eudora will be based on Thunderbird for its new versions.

Since ARM cores are usually integrated with other components on the same piece of silicon, I'm not sure there's anything new to do there. Besides, ATI's already working with Qualcomm to have their 3D tech in CDMA chipsets. (March 2004!)

G'Day,

Linux itself has a number of issues which have been outlined in various other comments. Lack of proper real-time support, speed on ARM, reliability and security. While these probably limit how useful Linux can be, there is a solution being developed. Two companies in particular are building it: Jaluna and ERTOS at NICTA. That solution is para-virtualising linux on top of a fast, real-time, and secure operating system. Performance, I hear you say? The ERTOS solution is so fast that in some cases it out-performs native linux, and in most others performs comparably. These systems have already started to make it into mobile phone manufacturer's hands

Dave.

Cell phones don't have to be as small as they are; the hand-set size of ancient rotary-dial phones was that size for a reason.
Well, if that size was used as a grip behind the body of the unit (with various hardware inside it, of course), then the face of the unit could be a fairly decent-sized touch-screen.
It can even be a decently low-power screen, once companies like this one and this one and this one finish their R&D in things like full-color and size-scaling.

I'd also like to mention that There was a buzz-phrase a number of years ago, "wafer scale integration", and I posted my own thoughts about it
here, in Nov 2003.
While they might not be using silicon as the substrate for this modern version of WSI, I have little doubt that something like what I described is what they are doing. Perhaps I should seek a royalty... :)

Qualcomm might take issue with it... http://www.qualcomm.com/qwbs/solutions/prodserv/qt racs.shtml

Your wish is about to come true. Qualcomm will be rolling out their own broadcast network on BEHALF of carriers(Verizon Wireless soon) on CDMA networks called MediaFLO:
http://www.qualcomm.com/mediaflo/index.shtml

It will allow CDMA operators to use Qualcomm's spectrum for forward-link-only broadcast media channels such as TV and radio. Also remember that Qualcomm's chips power half of America's cell phones on CDMA networks(Verizon, Sprint, Alltel).

Opera Mini, just like Google Local for Mobile, is a J2ME app. Hopefully they'll both have a BREW version soon.

I've actually seen a MediaFLO handset... and the TV quality actually looks really, really good. Suprisingly good. And the handset I saw had 3 hours of battery life while watching TV. Channel switching times are on par with my DirecTV.

I think both DVB-H and MediaFLO transmit at 30fps @ QVGA. QVGA is about the same size as CIF/D1, which is very passable TV resolution. QVGA screens are also becoming more common on handsets. And, if you think about it, a 3" diagonal screen at book distance (let's say, 18 inches) is similar to a 40" TV across the room (at, say, 20 feet away).. not a huge TV (I have a projector) but not unuseable.

I read somewhere that MediaFLO was coming to verizon next year!

Cell phones are getting higher quality video playback *and* video recording. In a couple of years, your average cell phone will be a passable digital camera and digital video recorder. What I think is interesting is the formatting. Most phones have their screens oriented vertically... I wonder if in five years we will see more content in "tallscreen" instead of "widescreen" as people use their phones for more and more media...

I thought it sounded like Very Minimal Shift Keying (VMSK), then I saw this at VMSK.org:

"XG technologies goes on the air with their method in November from an 800 foot tower..."

More info on VMSK here and here. The first paper states "no ultra narrowband modulation method, which includes VMSK and VPSK, can have substantially greater efficiency than conventional methods, such as QAM, in transmission in the same frequency band".

Note the following: In the first is the statement that Shannon's theorem is not violated but no justification is given. In the second it says that most power is put in the carrier. Both of these statements should raise red flags. Be skeptical!

Your are correct. This is just another scheme to fleece investors. The technology cannot work as claimed.

A system with similar claims called VMSK has been around for years. Phil Karn, a very highly respected engineer, thoroughly discredited it. But they are still soaking investors.

Here is Phil's analysis that shows their claims cannot be true:

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/critiq ue.html

The arguments with Walker, the inventor, went back and forth for a long time. Here is a summary page

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/

Walker's site is still active:

"Ultra Narrow Band Modulation"

http://www.vmsk.org/


You can see much of the claims are similar to the XMax hype. Here is Joe Bobier's site, xG Technology:

http://www.xgtechnology.com/index.html

Since VMSK was debunked long ago and is still being used to soak investors, we can expect XMax to similarly enjoy a long life keeping the unscrupulous owners rich.

Mike Monett

Note the following: In the first is the statement that Shannon's theorem is not violated but no justification is given. In the second it says that most power is put in the carrier. Both of these statements should raise red flags. Be skeptical!

Your are correct. This is just another scheme to fleece investors. The technology cannot work as claimed.

A system with similar claims called VMSK has been around for years. Phil Karn, a very highly respected engineer, thoroughly discredited it. But they are still soaking investors.

Here is Phil's analysis that shows their claims cannot be true:

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/critiq ue.html

The arguments with Walker, the inventor, went back and forth for a long time. Here is a summary page

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/

Walker's site is still active:

"Ultra Narrow Band Modulation"

http://www.vmsk.org/


You can see much of the claims are similar to the XMax hype. Here is Joe Bobier's site, xG Technology:

http://www.xgtechnology.com/index.html

Since VMSK was debunked long ago and is still being used to soak investors, we can expect XMax to similarly enjoy a long life keeping the unscrupulous owners rich.

Mike Monett

Note the following: In the first is the statement that Shannon's theorem is not violated but no justification is given. In the second it says that most power is put in the carrier. Both of these statements should raise red flags. Be skeptical!

Your are correct. This is just another scheme to fleece investors. The technology cannot work as claimed.

A system with similar claims called VMSK has been around for years. Phil Karn, a very highly respected engineer, thoroughly discredited it. But they are still soaking investors.

Here is Phil's analysis that shows their claims cannot be true:

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/critiq ue.html

The arguments with Walker, the inventor, went back and forth for a long time. Here is a summary page

http://people.qualcomm.com/karn/papers/vmsk/

Walker's site is still active:

"Ultra Narrow Band Modulation"

http://www.vmsk.org/


You can see much of the claims are similar to the XMax hype. Here is Joe Bobier's site, xG Technology:

http://www.xgtechnology.com/index.html

Since VMSK was debunked long ago and is still being used to soak investors, we can expect XMax to similarly enjoy a long life keeping the unscrupulous owners rich.

Mike Monett

Substantially higher bandwith for both forward and reverse links. Both Verizon and Sprint still have a lot of infrastructure yet to deploy. DO and DO rev A infrastructure should be more and more common as carriers add to and replace systems, just as DO and DO rev A will become more common in handsets.

But at least Verizon is somewhat on the ball with modern wireless data telecommunications. Why are the US GSM carriers so slow in deploying WCDMA? If you think EV-DO sucks, go look at EDGE.

It's actually common for trucking companies to use tracking technologies. Qualcomm is one of the big vendors for tracking technology (press release).

The point to tracking is not just productivity, as you indicate, but it also helps track down stolen trailers, often before the crooks even get a chance to unload them. This helps hold insurance rates down so that the trucking companies can offer better rates.

"... A small in-cabin CDMA cellular base station on the plane, that uses standard cellular communications, was connected to the worldwide terrestrial phone network by an air-to-ground Globalstar satellite link. ..."

I can: Qualcomms Digital Cinema Division has developed proprietary high bandwidth compression algorithms (based on DCT) coupled with proprietary encryption that is decrypted on the projector. They have two modes of transport, the satellite system, and multiple DVDs (per film). They want to be the complete transport system of the industry. They are quite set up for this, but there's a business model problem.

Movie theaters rarely pay for movie distribution. They pay for large projectors, but not the ~$4000 a pop for the film reel distribution. The new digital system large projectors cost an order of magnitude more than the analog style, and the distribution no longer costs the film studios any money. Since the theaters themselves run on pretty low margin, they're quite unhappy about this, which causes this long delay in getting this technology to proliferate.

This is how i understand it. Quite interesting, really.

Verizon is known for doing this type of things with thier phones. Entire communities have been created to discuss the problems and find workarounds. Just taking a look around at Howard forums and you can come up with tools such as the balpatch which was created in an attempt to take control of the Motorola T720 for loading of pics and tones. Despite a user outcry and many letters written to them in complaint of abandoning JAVA in favor of BREW (a proprietary Qualcomm language), Verizon cares not.

They do everything possible to keep people from downloading apps, tones, etc directly to the phone. No J2ME on any Verizon phone, as far as I can tell.

They do everything possible to keep people from downloading apps, tones, etc directly to the phone. No J2ME on any Verizon phone, as far as I can tell.

Verizon is currently using Qualcomm's Brew system, rebranded as Get It Now!.
If you want to get apps onto your Verizon handset, I suggset looking at Bitpim, you will require a datacable. (available online, or at a VZW store)

I believe Verizon is limiting access to bluetooth, simply to prevent people from using the data connection as a modem for they're laptops. Why this is, is beyond me. As they charge an arm and a leg for data transfers.

BREW

Looks really pretty, but it'll probably give you for free a good deal of the products Sony wants to sell you. Ergo you're unlikely to see it.

VMSK debunked

Or you could just download the BREW SDK from Qualcomm.

Qualcomm and Verizon do not want to make it difficult to develop BREW apps, as they are a potential source of revenue.

The LG phones are supposed to programmable via qualcomm BREW, but I don't know first thing about it - perhaps there is some API to read GPS, and may be another to initiate an IP connection and send it somewhere?

I'm waiting for VOIP to become ubiquitous. Then there will be no carrier or FCC type acceptance to stand in the way of encryption.

I want Navtech to team up with a couple of the large carriers, like Schneider National, Werner Enterprises, JB Hunt and the other large trucking companies. These 3 companies, and many more, already have GPS transponders in the truck that track their locations and report back in realtime via Satellite.
Now, when a driver sees major road construction, etc, on major interstates they simply hit a button on their QualComm OmniTracs unit marking it as such. After so many drivers have done this, it marks the area as being under construction, with a little bit of info about what's going on (resurfacing, 3 lanes closed westbound from 9pm-4am at milemarker 139 to 177 until 12/16/03) and mapquest inturns adds that data to it's routing database.
This would be an excellent way for mapquest to add a pay-for service that I for one would definately use.

Just a few links to underline point one and refute point 2

Federal Regs There are also local state ones for ALL motor vehicles. All the way from a motor cycle to a 18 wheeler.

a gps tracking system

I personally do not have a problem with these systems. If your driving like an ass I usually WISH a cop would be nearby to see it.

It's neat that Vanu is doing this on Linux, but it's not like it's a revolutionary technology breakthrough.

There's still an analog RF radio involved; all the digital processing is at the IF frequency. Digital signal processing of raw RF in the gigahertz range is still a bit out of reach. (And it will require an A/D with huge dynamic range.)

It's not clear that it's a win to do this using commodity PC hardware. Most of the crunching is in tight signal-processing loops that don't use much memory. With custom boards, you can have more CPUs on a board. Squeezing the physical size down matters in this application. If you can put the gear in a box on the pole, instead of needing a little shed, that's a big win. PCs also tend to use more power, and thus generate more heat, than DSPs per MIPS. Cooling all the gear is a constant headache in the cellular business. It typically doubles the power consumption, and the air conditioners themselves are maintenance headaches. What the industry wants is gear that doesn't require air conditioning, at least for smaller sites. Qualicomm has been shipping pole-mounted CDMA base stations since 1997.

It's also not clear that introducing a network between the radios and the processors helps reliability. If the radios are flexible enough that one can take over the job of another, it's easier to fail out a radio/processor pair and switch in another one.

None of this matters all that much because the cellular base station equipment industry is in the tank. The industry overexpanded based on forecasts of huge needs for 3G gear, and that didn't happen.