Archive for the ‘wireless’ Category

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

My Japan Times article on the Sharp Galapagos tablet

by Warren

Can’t believe I forgot to post this earlier, but I wrote an article for the Japan Times last week about Sharp’s Galapagos tablet, a pad device aimed straight at the Japanese market. Sharp claims otherwise, but “Galapagos” has become a term to define the uniqueness and weakness of the Japanese mobile phone market, which created some of the most advanced and esoteric phones on the market, in a sealed environment where innovation was allowed to flourish but never interact with the outside world.

With the onset of the iPhone, that market is crumbling. I personally see many, many iPhones everywhere in Tokyo, and that has to strike fear into the heart of every Japanese cell provider (other than Softbank, presumably making a killing by offering the iPhone exclusively in Japan.)

So I don’t hold out much hope for this Sharp tablet. They may know something I don’t, but I can’t see a device like this competing in any way with the iPad.

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Charlie Stross on the future of mobile

by Warren

Author and all-around smart guy has just put up a great post about the future of smartphones and the mobile internet. What he says shouldn’t surprise anyone; the mobile telcos will eventually be reduced to dumb pipes, including voice apps, and eventually Google will move in and push prices to the floor while spreading access far and wide. Of course Canadians will have to wait another decade or so after Stross’s posited date of 2019, given that our mobile telephony space is at best pathetic and at worst hopelessly corrupt.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Why Flash will rock on the iPhone

by Warren

Yep, the other side of the coin has dropped and I’ve got another article up about Flash on the iPhone up at Mac | Life, this time accentuating the positives of Adobe’s graphical powerhouse on Apple’s iconic mobile device.

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

More Mac | Life goodness, in print and online..

by Warren

So A couple of my iPhone articles are online on the newly revamped Mac | Life, including how to work around using SMS and how to revirginize your phone. I’ve also been informed that my article about iPhone hackers and the App Store is out in the print edition. W00t!

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Another Mac | LIfe iPhone article….

by Warren

This one is about the Canadian reaction to the Rogers data rates for the iPhone. And next month, I’ll hopefully have an honest-to-goodness-in-the-paper-magazine article in Mac | Life.

Monday, June 9th, 2008

Canada FINALLY gets the iPhone (for realz, yo)

by Warren

Yes, pigs are currently cruising through a very, very cold Hades, because Apple is finally releasing the iPhone in Canada, and not only that, it’s the new, improved, 3G iPhone. Due July 11th at Apple Stores, Rogers and Fido outlets, and presumably online. Of course, the potential fly in the ointment of all this mobile love is the big question of what precisely Rogers will charge for an iPhone-centric data plan. I’d like to think the larger opportunity of a game-changing product like the iPhone would jar Rogers to their senses and force them into an unlimited plan for $50 or less…but I’m not holding my breath.

Apple also rolled out Mobile Me, a revamp of the moribund .Mac service which prove to be quite useful (because .Mac certainly wasn’t), and the much awaited App Store, which promises to bring much the same creativity and device-extending goodness as the….uh, jailbreak community has for the last year.

Will I get a new 3G iPhone? it all depends on what Rogers does in terms of a data plan. There’s no point in having always-on connectivity if within a month I’m broke. But if they come to their senses and offer a reasonable rate, I’m most likely in.

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Can cell phones end poverty?

by Warren

While the traditional model of aid for developing countries is to dump a big pile of money into the lap of sometimes questionable governments, it turns out that the key to ending poverty might be to decentralize, lend smaller amounts of money to a larger group of people, and distribute cell phones amongst the poor. That’s subject of Wired founder Kevin Kelly’s blog post, which points to research indicating that democracy is more likely to sprout up when money, resources and communication tools are given out on a many-to-many model rather than a hierarchical, authoritarian approach. I recently had a chance to interview someone at Kiva.org, a microfinancing site, and he reiterated that not only do micro-loans do tangible good but the poorest beneficiaries of the loans are the most likely to pay back their debts.

At any rate, its interesting to see the Internet peer-to-peer model spreading to the developing world at the micro level. At the macro level, as noted in Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World,” developing nations like India and China re already reaping the benefits of outsourcing, connectivity and a global marketplace.

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

Zuh…une?

by Cam Cavers

Friday night… an edgy East Vancouver club/gallery/skatepark… after the DJ finishes a two-hour set, the crowd of hipsters eagerly awaits Vancouver’s own faux-Brit powerpop punk bad The Tranzmitors’ live show… and pockets of Internet geeks nervously eye the crowd while checking out… the Microsoft Zune?

If it sounds like a strange scene for a Microsoft product launch, it was indeed, but then, the Zune is an odd product, a hardware device from a (mainly) software company, with hobbled wifi (for limited file sharing only!) and DRM incompatibility with Microsoft’s own PlaysForSure standard for music players.

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Tuesday, April 29th, 2008

At long last, Rogers announces the iPhone in Canada

by Warren

It’s about damned time. Though Rogers hasn’t said much else, so we don’t know if this is the rumoured 3G model, or whether they’ll reduce their ridiculous data rates to something civilized. Since I already have an iPhone, I’m waiting to see just how much better the new phone will be…and then we’ll see.

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

Canadian iPhone hacking article up at Mac | Life

by Warren

I wrote an article for Mac|Life about the lengths we have to go to north of the border to get and use iPhones. I think Mac|Life deserves extra points for using a flappy headed South Park Canadian as the symbol of our displeasure.

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