Well, the sushi lunch would have been better at Japengo, or, at least more likely trouble free. . As it was everything started ok enough. My trusty 1998 VW passat waiting for me in the parking lot - check. Perfect timing to pick up Mike and head over to the new sushi place in Pacific Beach - check. All ok, untiil I pull into the driveway a bit hastily for the sushi bar. Oops. turns out that the oil pan on VW Passats is located in the front of the car, on the bottom. Oops. Well, as you can guess, I dug a small hole in the oil pan. Oops.So what to do now. We had a reservation, and the sushi was excellent, but I could not really drive the car without burning up the engine. So I had to call a tow truck, which I waited for while eating the great sushi. . That was the worst part; not being able to savor the delicious food. Maybe next time. A quick call to AAA (they used to check the card first, but this fellow just looked at car, hooked it up, and took the car later). Towed the car to the dealer, got a cab back to the sushi place, picked up my friend, went back to his office, then my home, then back to work. Fun. Maybe next time! .

Going for sushi at lunch today. I'm thinking we'll go to Cafe Japengo. Always good there! Ok - to those who worte about the dearth of photos (aside from Lance Armstrong), I'll put some more up, more often! Hey, just glanced at the Marine Corps Marathon course. I'm running that one this year, will be my first. I thought it was as flat as a pancake, but you don't get a full view of D.C. from the Iwo Jima memorial without a little hill...listen to my whine!! you call that a hill? The tour guys were going up 10 degree grades for 12 miles in the sun! Oh well. Training going OK, but not great. more later...

on massive multi-player gaming in Korea...and the best use of new media and broadband...

Wired looks at Korea

South Korea's broadband commons challenges North American assumptions about what bandwidth is for and why it's relevant. In the US, cable, telephone, and media companies spin visions of set-top boxes and online jukeboxes, trying to "leverage content" and turn old archives into new media streams. There is a profound fear of empowering consumers to share media in a self-organizing way on a mass scale. Yet this is precisely what makes South Korea the broadband capital of the world. It's not a futuristic fantasy that caters to alienated couch potatoes; it's a present-day reality that meets the needs of a culture of joiners — a place where physical and virtual are not mutually exclusive categories.

in the words of rosanne rosanna dana..."never mind"...fixed it...next comes a Real Live Boy..i mean..a Real Live WAPlog

so, i tried doing the WAPblogging thing with one of my mobile phones (I have the following mobile devices, FYI: Kyocera 3035, Kyocera 2235, Nokia 6370, Sanyo SCP-5000, Sharp Z800, Blackberry 957, Palm i705)

But, as you can see from the photo, I keep getting errors. I'm using this site: http://wap.ubique.ch/wapblogger/ which is described here.

Any ideas??

Voice recognition has been one of the "coming soon" technologiesn in the telecom industry for a long time. Perhaps the complexity of human vocal interaction has been underestimated. We've all heard the voice response systems that some major companies have employed, and of course there was TellMe, BeVocal, Quack.com, and other voice portals that included elements of voice recognition in them. With 400 million mobile phones being sold annually, and a billion mobile phone users, you'd think that there would be more emphasis here. Not so, this year anyway. Windows XP has VR included, but I for one have really struggled with getting it to work properly. Between these two related pieces of technology there should be a great business somewhere. Two of the bigger companies working on this technology at the core level are the West Coast (re Stanford) team of Nuance, and the East Coast (re MIT) team of SpeechWorks. They are forging new ground and maging progress but there is a long way to go before we are the starship enterprise "computer...set a course of the neutral zone, warp factor 3..and can you bring me a tall skinny latte too?"

Part of the problem could be the old addage - "it's not what you say, but how you say it". In the latest edition of Technology review is an article on just that subject, prosody. Check it out.

Well, he did it again today. What more is there to say about this man?? He holds up his end of the bargain that's for sure. Since I was 13 and the youngest finisher in the infamous Tecate-Ensanada bicycle ride I've been semi-hooked. A big crash in a criterium in 1976 really ruined it for me though. My precious Masi was ruined.

OK, back to work...

Q: Do you have to kill the village in order to save it? Does the entire telecom sector, wireless included, have to file for bankruptcy so that nobody has an unfair advantage in the future? It's not like th entire world is not using an ever increasing amount of telecom services - EVERY DAY. But, deployment is expensive. so is customer care. so is marketing. All the bright engineers making XX% increases is wireless access speed have been somewhat misled. All that bricks/mortar stuff you need to put up transmission and backhaul make the service STILL too expensive compared to what people are willing to pay. Even if the equipment was FREE!

Lance Lance Lance! You gotta love a guy who powers up a mountian behind his erstwhile teamate (Roberto Heras) while chatting on his mobile phone. BTW - it's now over. But, the next three days should be fun to watch.

On a orthogonal note, here's a freakshow...if you remember the "off the wall" album and what happened to his skin color and shape subsequent....

Tour day off. Lance in good spot. Thursday begins the real tour, and Thursday-Sunday will be brutal!

mMode stab at photos on cell phones. As much as I think AT&T is a company living like the inheritor of large wealth (that it's squandering), I wish them success with this product. Nothing like competition to get things moving.

It's all about money. money money money. greed. Oh, you wireless companies are making some profit (or no profit, judging from balance sheets) from travelers that are using their cell phones while in OUR Airport? hmmm...well, it's OUR airport, so we should get a share of your revenue. Screw the consumer...we are the AIRPORT. Want a sandwich? $15. A bottle of water? $5. As Jerry Seinfeld says, do these folks at the airport have any idea what prices are out there in the real world? Ever wonder why there is no 802.11 in airports? Guess what, 'cause the AIRPORT won't allow it unless they are the ones profiting from it. SCREW THE CONSUMER! These airport people don't have to worry about competition, there's not going to be another LAX opening down the street.

Scenario planning is a tool for looking at the future with an open mind and planning accordingly. In the book, the Art of the Long View, Peter Schwarz goes over this in wonderful detail. Since predicting the future is impossible, sceneraio planning opens ones mind to the future in ways that would have helped those bidding on 3G spectrum. There are probably some other thought experiements and due dilligence that would have helped them too, but that's another story. In reading a recent Telephony editorial by Peter Leyden, he listed as his favoite web site Long Bets.com This site asks futurists to put their money where their mouth is. You place bets on things you think will happen in the future, real bets (min $1000) and the bet is collected at once as a chartible contribution. As are your winnings. Clever.

Why are companies that grew steadily and were based on strong-knit friendships, like MSFT and QCOM a success, and those that grew rapidly more prone to failure? These comanies are over 15 years old each. But a bigger question is corporate culture. These companies seem to thrive on mutual hard work and respect, with some healthy competition thrown in. They both seem to value individuals; particularly smart individuals. From the outside they appear to be less "military" in their organizationial structure. It seems logical that it is much easier to rapidly build an army with a rigid process then a great corporation with a more relaxed culture. But building a great company that survives through growing pains relies on careful selection. Almost to the degree to which one should use to choose a mate. In his book TopGradingGeoff Smart created an interview process that is radically extensive. Time consuming, but as he points out, less so than picking the wrong person...or mate.

One of the criticisms of CDMA based mobile phone operators has been the lack of international roaming. Specifically, outside of North America a Verizon phone won't work in too many places. Now, does that really matter?? 5% of the US population (born in the US) hold passports. 1% use them. (I heard these stats - have not checked them...but it sounds right). so for the 2.5 million people that need to leave north america AND take their existing mobile phone with them, they may be better off with a "world phone". This has had more implications regionally than for Americans. That is, international roaming throughout asia or in South America is more important than North America, and, Europe has the biggest international roaming issue of all. Hence GSM. Originally called "Group Special Mobile" for the French committee of ETSI that worked on it from 1985-1989+, it's primary goal was to have pan-European roaming rather than to increase voice capacity; that was the 1989 American problem. So, GSM solved the Euro roaming problem, and fit nicely with the "consolidation" that occured there.

. Today KDDI announced that they have expanded CDMA roaming to parts of the US and China. This is more good CDMA news.

Tour de France time....again. Seems like just yesterday they were rolling into Paris. Thanks to Outdoor Life Network, I've got live tour (my family does not think this is a blessing) every day! What a prolouge, huh? Lance, the old time trial specialist showed why as he took that short and intense one Saturday. Today was really fun though. The look on Bertogliati (who is that guy??) when we pulled away from the peleton and held on. On camera it looked like the running of the bulls, but with 1 runner and 100 bulls. Fun!

JULY 7, 2002 Rubens Bertogliati, 23, one of the youngest riders in the Tour de France, tarnished the image of the bigger names today when he sprinted clear with 1,000 yards to go to steal the first stage and take the leader's yellow jersey by three seconds. Bertogliati, a winner of only two previous races, gave Switzerland an unexpected advantage at least for a day. His win has also taken the pressure off American Lance Armstrong, the race favorite who was openly looking for
a new wearer of the maillot jaune after his victory in Saturday's Prologue time trial.

Being the loyal Verizon customer that I am, I had to try their newest offer from Pinpoint. This is basically something that MyAladdin had a couple of years ago with infospace (what happend to infospace?). Difference is that it is part of Verizon and is up and running. So now I have a few "mobileized" web sites linked to MSN and VRZN so I can read CNET inbetween sets at the gym, or when waiting in line at the deli. No. I would not pay a lot to be able to do this. i don't believe I'm paying for this service as it is today.

Location location location....after hearing the CEO of Wherify talking about the kid finder, I got to thinking "yea..why doesn't Disneyland do this?" May have blogged that one before. Well, last weekend at WildRivers in Irvine there it was..the kid finder from SafteZone. Not only was I just about the only guy with a cell phone at this place, I'm 100% certain I was the only guy with a i705 wireless palm. These water theme parks are not wireless friendly. In fact one of our group had her backpack stolen from a lounge chair near us.

SafeTzone installed its technology at the Wild Rivers water park in Irvine, Calif., for $275,000 last August. It also is in Buffalo Bill's Casino and Resort in Nevada. Visitors can rent the wristwatches at the water park. At Wild Rivers, guests can rent a wristwatch that sends out and responds to radio frequency. When a family enters the park, their wristwatches can be scanned into a computer system as a group; only members of the group can locate each other. Thirty-four antennas scattered throughout the park can pick up and transmit signals from the wristwatches. Group members can locate each other at three computer kiosks which display a map of the park and the location of the people in their group.

boy, the Japanese make cool devices. don't know why that is, but I'm sure there's a good reason. Probably due to the fact that people in Japan spend less time at home than we do here in the US...homes being smaller due to land and financial constraints. If you've never been to Tokyo (or Japan in general) than it's difficult to appreciate this. They live well in small quarters. Remember when stereo equipment was valued totally on size? That is, bigger=better? Then those little systems with little speaker and little screens came out, and, they sounded great. somebody told me that they were designed specifically for the Japanese domestic market and the smaller spaces (sorry Klipsch). I know that REAL audiophiles read magazines like The Absolute Sound, and spend thousands on turntables with special ball bearings and 3 foot concrete slabs to put their precious platters on...because CDs sound so dreadful.

Oh yea - here's the news on the Sprint PCS 1XRTT network:

July 02, 2002 3:13 PM EST

NEW YORK—Sprint PCS’ highly anticipated next-generation network is scheduled to launch August 10, according to Audiovox president and chief executive officer Philip Christopher who let the cat out of the bag during a quarterly conference call.

While Sprint PCS had no comment on the report, Christopher said the network launch will coincide with the introduction of its Thera smartphone for the Sprint PCS 1x network.

IM or SMS. Keep getting that question, and getting stuck. Having used both a ton, I can say with higher confidene than others I've talked to that IM on a mobile device sucks, when the person on the other end it a desktop user. A friend of mine, upon noticing that the user shows up as Mobile in the buddy list begins "..sending a rapid series of open ended questions" like:

- what applications are likely to be included in the long term wireless device roadmap?
- What's the role of edge network technology in wireless networks?
- will IETF and 3GPP and 3GPP2 and OHG and IEEE and ITA create a combined standards group..how woud that function alongside OMA and other similar groups?

etc. That has not stopped the enthusiasm and press releases on the subject. Here's the thing, SMS is really mobile email; just look at the attributes. It is a store/forward type of message system that does not require presence. IM on the other hand is a real-time system that depends on presence for it's power. Wireless wide area network coverage will always be a bit spotty. IM use depends on a stable, reliable connection for it's real-time use. For stationary "mobile" users this will be fine. especially when the new PDA/Smartphone are more common (read: "cheaper and better").