Twelve Black Code Monkeys

One thing that you can use many digital cell phones for (not just Smartphones like the Treo 650) is as a modem for your computer. So you can travel around with your laptop and establish a connection anywhere you have a data signal - even in a moving train or car. I actually tried this out first way back about four years ago when I managed to get my old Motorola P280 to connect with a free ISP and connected it via it’s infrared port to my Sony Clie. I remember reading some email trying to browse the web a bit before it crashed. I only tried this a few times because back then the applications were just not very robust and even if they were, the speeds I was getting were glacial.

I never did try this with my Treo 600. I was perfectly happy to have a phone that could do many of the things I use the internet for. Plus I would have had to buy a cable or at least an additional piece of software.

One of the big things I kept hearing about when the Treo 650 first came out was the fact that Dial-Up Networking, or “DUN” (which basically means using your phone as a modem for your computer) was crippled for the Sprint (and later Cingular) versions of the phone. Specifically, you couldn’t use Bluetooth to connect your phone to your laptop. You could still get a cable or perhaps even do infrared, but infrared requires your phone’s infrared port is facing the computer’s, and it’s very easy for this connection to be broken if one moves slightly out of place. A cable of course means extra money, possibly software which costs yet more. Bluetooth is a wireless technology that allows the phone to communicate with the computer from up to 30 feet away. You do, however, need to buy a Bluetooth device for your computer in most instances. I bought one made by Belkin that slips into a USB port on my laptop. They can be had for $10-20 if you look around.

Of course, despite buying an unlocked version of the Treo 650 which didn’t have the limitations of the branded models, I still just never got around to getting DUN working on my phone. So, this weekend I got motivated for some reason and I set about trying to get this working and while I consider myself pretty technical, it really took me way longer than it should have. PalmOne provides a document that will get you started, but you still need information specific to your wireless carrier. In my case it was Tmobile. Specifically you need to know their APN (Access Point Number). For Tmobile in the U.S. it is internet2.voicestream.com. Voicestream used to be Tmobile’s name before they changed it about 3 years ago. Even after configuring everything precisely, I kept getting these vague error messages. Finally, I changed or reset something and at least it was trying to dial, but would tell me there was a hardware failure. I also had issues with comm Ports on my laptop, but eventually got that taken care of. After hitting my head against the wall for a while longer I finally posted a message to a TreoCentral.com forum asking for advice, and a response made me go back and check to make sure my APN was set correctly. Of course there was a typo! I had written “voicestram” instead of “voicestream.” I’m sure many of you techies have experienced this same sort of thing either with your software or hardware configurations: after struggling for hours on something that just doesn’t want to work, finally something occurs to you and you realize that there’s this really simple stupid thing that you’ve gotten wrong. It’s usually something very basic - enough to make you feel like an idiot!

In any case, I finally got it working and the speed did not seem all that bad, although I only used it to load up a couple of web pages. The one thing that concerns me a little is that when I spoke to Tmobile (when getting the proper APN), they told me that when I use this type of connection it counts as a call, not as data. This is a bit problematic in that I have an unlimited data package so I’m used to being able to pick up email, browse the web, etc., whenever I want. I have unlimited calling on nights and weekends, but during peak hours, I really have to watch my minutes. Recently we’ve been going over by a bit, which has resulted in some painful bills!

DUN is great when you really want to see and use the web in all its glory. It’s great to have a hand-held device where you can go check a web page from anywhere and not be encumbered by an actual computer, but there are also times when you really want to spend lots of time reading blogs, doing research, etc., and while you might have to use some minutes from your cell phone plan to use DUN, you also avoid having to pay for Wifi access. Wifi access can be very cheap, of course, or even free - I was getting all of this working this weekend from a Panera, which offers free Wifi at many of their locations - but it doesn’t come even close to how ubiquitous cell phone signals are. I could use DUN in the middle of a lake, or on a moving train, as I said. It can take a while to get set up properly, especially if you make dumb mistakes like me, but it really can be a very nice option for internet connectivity if you don’t mind the relatively slow speeds of 1-2 times that of a 56K modem…

Andrew over and Treonauts just reported on a new device that may provide true wifi capabilities to both the Treo 600 and the Treo 650!

I’ve written previously about how a hacker recently was able to make modifications to the Treo 650’s firmware as well as modifying drivers for Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for their Tungsten PDA’s and was able to accomplish Wifi capability for the Sprint Treo 650’s that are currently out. That was great and many will end up using that as a means of getting a high-speed connection. However, the two things it didn’t address were Treo 600 users and the much greater energy usage of wifi. Not to mention having to alter the firmware which is not the most user-friendly proposition.

Enter Enfora. (as an aside, this company name sounds very funny to me because we have a Greek Diner here with a very similar-sounding name – Amphora!) Apparently, they have developed a Wifi-capable hardware add-on to the phone which includes both a wifi receiver as well as large battery for compensating for this added power drain. The big downside, of course is that this basically double the size of the phone, and probably more than double the weight. But while this will decrease the mobility factor of the phone, will it do so any more than Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for which you will have to either carry around an AC power supply or an extra Treo battery or two?

The next obvious question is whether this will allow for VOIP (Voice over IP - internet telelphony) functionality. I don’t know if this can be built into software, but Skype apparently does something similar to VOIP and so theoretically they could create a PalmOS version of Skype. Of course you could always look into Vonage’s newly announced Wifi phone, (or Broadvoice’s that’s been around for almost a year) that will do just this, but then of course you have to carry around yet another piece of equipment, and that’s what we’ve been trying to get away from! What we really need is a purely software version of VOIP implementation like Skype that can work on many different platforms, including Smartphones.

The tech blogs and Treo sites are abuzz today with the news from a TreoCentral member Shadowmite (the same guy who was able to defeat the Sprint Bluetooth crippling) that he had been able to create a firmware hack (hosted here) on the Treo 650 that would allow Pa1mOne’s Wifi card to work. The hack is still in “beta’ if that term can even refer to a hack! The one problem is that in order to have both wifi capability as well as Sprint’s “Vision” 2.5G data network, you need to do a hard reset during the install process, which will wipe all your data. This may not be a big deal for many for the reward of Wifi, and it also may just be a temporary hurdle. Now that the hack exists, it seems that third party companies may indeed take the initiative in developing a wifi card with drivers that will work on the 650 and maybe the 600 as well. The one issue remains that the added drain from the card may make the battery life of the Treo run out much faster than normal, so manufacturers may have to develop some kind of onboard battery for the wifi card, or users may just have to invest in additional batteries for the 650 (or external batteries for the 600).

When I started using the Treo 600 back in June, it was as a trial. A friend of mine had bought it several months earlier and was using it on his AT&T account, but he had recently switched to Verizon because of their better reception. I borrowed it from him to see if I could get it to work on my T-Mobile account. After doing lots of searching and playing around with it, I finally got it to work, but it was not easy.

As I talked about in my post yesterday, because smartphones are inherently tied up in the mobile phone industry, the carrier companies have a huge influence over the phone manufacturers. These companies don’t want to make it easy for me to take my phone from one carrier to another. AT&T was notorious for locking phones and not allowing their unlocking for any reason, which kind of defeats part of the purpose of having a GSM phone. T-Mobile is a little bit better in that they let you unlock your phone usually after a short length of time as long as your account is in good standing. Cingular has historically been the best about unlocking, but now that they have merged with AT&T, I don’t know if these policies will change. Of course you can usually find a completely unlocked GSM phone to work on your given network, but it will come at a premium. And CDMA users are pretty much SOL because they have no interchangeable SIM card.

No doubt, Pa1mOne was pressured by one or more of these companies to not provide wifi drivers for the Treo 600 or 650, and they complied. While this makes a lot of people angry at Pa1mOne, which I’m sure is at least somewhat justified, they are simply complying with the realities of the business. If they were to anger the providers, those providers might just decide not to offer the phone and then Pa1mOne would be giving up huge amounts of potential revenue. So while I too am angry that Pa1mOne did not have the guts to stand up to these companies, I can’t really be too angry, because doing so would be extremely risky for them. With the carriers merging and thus gaining even more power to influence phone manufacturers (who are not merging at all, as far as I can tell!), the situation does not look that promising until manufacturers can gain some kind of strategic advantage that allows them not to be pushed around as much by the carriers.

Thanks to Shadowmite and those who helped him, we may have a hack that will give us the ability to do wifi that should have been included to begin with, despite what the carriers might want.

Link, link, link

Well, just when I thought I knew the major new wireless protocols that will be coming to market in the next few years, a direct successor to the current 802.11b and 802.11g somehow got by me. 802.11n is the next in the series and it will apparently have at least many times the speed and range as 802.11g. What that means in absolute terms is rates as high as 500mbps (this is about the equivalent of what firewire or USB 2.0 can communicate as a reference), and a range that might be up to half a mile, perhaps more. Of course, the farther you are from your hotspot, the slower your speed. Then again, since few people have “high-speed” internet connections that are more than 2mbps, it seems unlikely that you would notice anything until you got close to the limit. That’s the other problem. It’s great to have a lot of range, but what good does it do an individual when they aren’t likely to be able to take advantage of it except when they are transferring files from one computer to another over a network (not the Internet itself)?

In any case, Belkin has just come out with what seems to be the first actual implementation of 802.11N, although they are calling it Pre-N because the 802.11n standard hasn’t actually been approved by the IEEE standards body, so it could very well change, making this a dead-end. But then again, if you only buy Belkin’s set of interrelated network products (router and network cards), then you shouldn’t necessarily have to worry, as long as they continue to support it with the appropriate drivers.

Here’s a review of the Belkin equipment from PC Magazine

Mike Mesnick has a report about troubles getting Wimax, the next generation of wireless networking technology that increases the range many fold and that has gotten tons of buzz in the press.

“No one denies the potential of WiMAX as a wide area broadband wireless networking technology. Sometimes, though, it appears the buzz has outpaced reality by a significant margin. There are already plenty of stories where either the operators rolling out wireless broadband or the press reporting it have decided to call it WiMAX either because they assume that WiMAX means all wireless broadband, or because they’re trying to jump on the marketing bandwagon.”

This may be old news to many out there, but I just learned about Wireless USB (WUSB) today, a possible successor to the troubled “Bluetooth” standard.

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that allows devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. It is different from “Wifi” in that it is not really meant for internet or networking applications, but rather for device-to-device communications, such as synching one’s phone or PDA with a computer, etc. But Bluetooth, while so many had high hopes for it and it still is considered a prime feature by some, has not taken off as fast as many would have hoped. Apparently it is simply not the easiest technology to implement. Its implementation has had reliability problems and of course the speed (rated to a max of 700kpbs, but in practice often a small fraction of that) is the one thing that makes it impractical for heavy-duty networking.

WUSB, a new standard that Intel, HP, Microsoft, and others are developing, has the potential for fulfilling all the potential of Bluetooth and then some. Such a standard would allow for speeds as great as the current USB 2.0 standard of 480mbps. Whether the ease of implementation or reliability would be better is anyone’s guess, but hopefully this consortium will learn a lesson from Bluetooth. Being based on the USB interface is also an advantage, as this part of the technology is already well-established. USB-enabled devices are ubiquitous and while Firewire competes with it and is actually preferred for some applications like video, a wireless technology could actually minimize firewire’s usage to an even smaller niche.

The other potential application that I can see for such devices would be in local wireless networks. Wimax, a developing technology that will provide large-range wireless networking (in the order of miles) at speeds of up to 70mbps, but in practice probably closer to 10mbps, could be the technology that makes all consumer DSL and cable internet connections obsolete. Providers would simply have to construct transmitters like cell towers are constructed today and cover the landscape with them. Ok, well, that’s not exactly “simple” but I can’t see why existing cell-towers couldn’t be used for the same purpose. In fact, with Voice Over IP technology, Wimax just may end up replacing standard cell phones. Even supposed 3G cell phone technology doesn’t hold a candle to Wimax speeds. But as fast as Wimax is, it can still be surpassed by at least seven times via the current highest USB speeds, and who knows if a USB 3.0 standard will come out and up the ante even further. In any case, Wimax could provide the bandwidth for most internet communications, but for certain applications one would want the higher speeds of WUSB. Of course local networking would benefit from such speeds, since transferring files from one computer to another would be much faster. But with the large files sizes from digital cameras that keep going up in resolution, and the increasing number of people using digital video cameras, the desire to share these with others increases, and even the desire for back-up services that use internet hosted off-site storage. If the past 20 years has taught us anything, it’s that as storage and bandwidth gets cheaper, technology also finds ways of filling these with larger files. Compression technologies can only go so far combating this trend. As this continues, a seven-fold (or probably much greater) increase in speed will be of huge benefit. Instead of places like Starbucks and Borders just offering plain old Wifi, we could see them fitted with truly massive pipes to the internet – 10Gbit or more - and then folks could bring in their devices that could talk to the router at WUSB speeds of 480Mps. One could download a DVD movie from an iTunes for movies type service in about a minute, one could do high-quality, perhaps even high-definition quality video teleconferencing, or more standard quality but with multiple people in different parts of the world. Or one could simply backup one’s entire 160GB hard drive to an online storage/back-up service in about 45 minutes. But such a large pipe might be prohibitive enough that the cost for using it might be a subscription fee in the $100’s. Who knows, but it’s fun to speculate anyway.

In any case, technologies that at least on the face of it could potentially increase the bandwidth by orders of magnitude and do it fairly quickly, easily, and inexpensively, just show that what we currently see as a huge change in how we communicate over the last five years, could equaled or even surpassed in the next five, or even fewer years.

My caffein-addled brain is on a tear. I often get this way, even when I’m just drinking decaf. Something about coffee sets my mind in motion. Caffeine just adds some speed. I have been out all morning (and part of the afternoon) wondering my neighborhood of Adams Morgan in DC as well as a bit south into the Dupont Circle neighborhood. It is the perfect day to do this. There is no humidity, it is warm, but with a nice breeze. Perfectly blue sky and sunny. It’s also a Sunday morning where lots of other folks like me are out just enjoying a lazy Sunday before the workweek starts again tomorrow. If only life were a perpetual series of Sundays like this. I could get used to it. Then again, experience seems to show that days like this have such value because they are not so ordinary. If every day were like this, perhaps it would just be boring. Or at least we’d take it for granted much more. I remember a year or two ago there were big swaths of time during the spring and/or summer where the weather was just as perfect as today. I would take every opportunity to be outside. I’m sure there were days where I stayed inside despite not having to, but I do remember always thinking, “Take advantage of it!”

Anyway, I’m reading a book on espresso which is quite good, but which I’ll post a review when I’m done (hopefully within a couple of weeks). The ability to sit at a sidewalk cafe, people watch, read, surf the Internet, and even make a little small talk with strangers next to you, is something that is so nice. I’m a fairly shy person and so have spent a lot of my weekends going to public places like these because it feels like although I may not be a part of some social event, I am at least part of the world at large if even as an observer. At least I’m not shut up in some small apartment watching the NOT Real World on TV. Even now that I am getting married, I still enjoy the opportunity to get out on my own (my fiancée is away this weekend) and soak in the sensations of neighborhood life without any time constraints, or need to focus all one’s attention on one thing.

Speaking of caffein, I have the odd site of a giant automated convenience store or vending machine right near where I live in Adams Morgan. Up until today I had only used it once - to rent a dvd just for the heck of it. But they have all kinds of items from eggs and milk to contraceptives and more. Walking by it today I decided to take a quick look since I haven’t really looked at it carefully since they redesigned and restocked it several months ago. I happened upon a product that I’d never seen before which I felt I had to try. It was sugar-free Red Bull. Red Bull is one of these so-called “energy drinks” which mixes caffein, sugar and perhaps other stimulants, and give one a “jolt of energy” - since our lives aren’t already fast-paced enough, huh? But being a low-carber, I don’t beverages with sugar. Actually I swore off even diet sodas a couple of years ago because the carbonation and other chemicals they put in them are not very good for you and besides probably hinder weight loss. But sugar free Red Bull I just had to try. I’ve heard Red Bull is horrible tasting. I doubt I will ever drink this stuff again, but I thought I could at least try it. I’ll wait till tomorrow morning though, as I’m already sufficiently caffeinated for the next 16 hours!

I mentioned surfing the Internet, so I thought I’d elaborate a little on this. I have a phone that lets me browse the web, send and receive email, and send and receive instant messages as long as I can receive a signal (which is often very easy in the middle of DC, but sometimes surprisingly fickle). Although the screen is small, black and white, and won’t let me visit just any page, it will do in a snap. I eagerly await the day when I upgrade to a device that has a slightly larger color screen that has fewer limitations in what pages it can load, has a faster speed, and can even do wifi. Wifi, for those not familiar, is another word for wireless networking. You see this mostly in laptops, but an increasing number of smaller devices like Palmpilots, PocketPC’s, etc. are starting to incorporate the capability with varying degrees of success. Of course you can also put a wireless network card in a full-blown desktop PC and thus avoid having to deal with all the ugly wires.

Anyway, I do have a laptop and will take this out to do some work (I do freelance web development in addition to my fulltime job as a web developer) since it’s often more fun - although usually also more distracting - than sitting at home. There are a bunch of different wifi networks out there that provide services at various locations. I have a subscription with one of the largest of these, the so-called Hotspot service from Tmobile. Since my phone is through them, I pay a discounted rate of $20/month. I haven’t tried to break this down to a per-minute or per-hour cost yet. My guess is that since I’ve had my laptop, I’ve spent an average of maybe 15 hours per month give or take, which would mean this costs about $1.33/hour. This compares favorably to all the other networks out there, except ones that are free of course! There are free access points around, but I’ve heard about more in New York (Bryant Park and Union Square) than I have in DC.

I wonder if eventually we will see public wifi access points in every city (and perhaps even small towns) that are sponsored by taxpayer money? Probably the user base of such services is not quite there yet, although given a few years we may see every phone, laptop, pda, and even desktop computer that is manufactured have a built in wifi card. Also, most wifi networks are still using the older protocol of 802.11b, which has a range of around 150 ft and a speed of 11mbps (really 4mps in the real world). 802.11g, a newer standard introduced last year as a stopgap before a real next-generation standard is agreed to, has not quite taken off, despite being backward compatible with 802.11b. This newer standard offers 55mbps (around 20mbps in the real world) and longer ranges. By the way, MBPS stands for Mega (million) Bits Per Second. Modems currently top out around 56K, or 56 Kilo (thousand) bits per second, so 4mps is still about 70 times faster than a 56K modem! But speed in and of itself, while nice, is not the be all and end all, at least for me right now. When people start using their devices to hold impromptu video teleconferences, or just phone conversations, or to download and watch live HDTV or dvd-quality movies or tv shows, etc., then speed will definitely become a factor. But for now speed FOR ME is secondary to range. With the next generation standards, we could see ranges of 1/4 of a mile or more for a single access point. What this means is that a city could buy 100 or 200 access points (perhaps a little more for really large cities), or smaller towns could buy a half dozen and voilà, instant access for everyone! So, how would this work? It could be done on a federal basis that would ensure access everywhere (even along lonely highways in very sparsely populated areas of Nevada or Wyoming), or it would all be on a local or state basis. States could pay for it via taxes, and perhaps could charge non-residents extra and make some additional money. In addition to tourism dollars, why not make some cybertourism dollars? I don’t know, maybe that type of system would be too complex. But would letting the federal gov’t institute it make for very slow progress as new technologies develop? Or would it simply be an area that people don’t want the feds involved in now that they are already taking away more of our privacy? Private industry will make things happen much faster, we will just have to pay more. Maybe the state/local plan would be a good compromise, but then again more rural/poorer areas would not be served as well..

If you would like to look at what kind of establishments around you offer wifi, here are just a few of the many sites to check out:

• http://www.hotspot-locations.com/
• http://www.hotspotlist.com/
• http://www.makewirelesswork.com/directory.htm (no longer available)
• http://www.wifinder.com/

Here are a few wifi commercial (read not free) networks aside from Tmobile’s mentioned above:

• Wise Technologies
• PassYm
• Wayport
• Surf and Sip Network

Well, my brother just sent me this news piece from atnewyork.com about McDonalds and AT&T offering wireless Internet access and I just had to wax a little about it. The article is mainly about how McDonalds is going to offer wifi service at a bunch of their New York and New Jersey locations for free in August. McDonalds actually has been offering wifi for a while now in some of its locations. As you may know there are completely free wifi “hotspots” out there, some being the negligence of a person with a home wireless network that hasn’t encrypted it so anyone can use it, others intentionally left open for altruistic purposes. There are other places you can pay to attach yourself to the internet via wifi. I’m sure there are smaller and maybe even single-location hotspots that charge, but the main company out their selling wifi services at public locations is Tmobile via their “Hot Spot” service. The service isn’t just available in Tmobile stores but in many Starbucks and Borders Books and Music stores.

Tmobile offers a service that one can subscribe to on a monthly basis. It’s $30/month or $20 if you get your cell phone service through Tmobile. McDonalds doens’t offer it. Tmobile also offers a “day pass” for $10. After August, McDonalds will be offering a day of access for only $3. So it seems like for people who only need service on a fairly irregular basis, McDonalds may actually soon trump Tmobile. I guess we will have to wait and see though how many people would rather save $7 but have to sit on uncomfortable plastic seats and eat food that is mostly bad for you and patronize a business that’s generally deleterious to its workforce and many related industries like ranching (anyone read Fast Food Nation), or if you’d rather spend that extra $7 to be in an environment more conducive to working, writing, etc., where you may be surrounded by lots of reference books that could complement your internet research capabilities, or alternate be somewher with some relaxing music (with the occasional din from the espresso machine), plush chairs or couches, and the temptation of spending an additional $7 on each new coffee concoction that you are driven to try.

If McDonalds can get this wifi into all of its locations - which are still more ubiquitous, I believe, then Borders and Starbucks Combined - it may actually make a run for Tmobile’s money. Perhaps it doesn’t have a monthly plan because it doesn’t think anyone will want to spend more than a few days a month sitting for more than a couple of hours in your average McDonalds. But for the traveler, especially one not going to places with a Starbucks or Borders, this might be a good deal. Starbucks has started showing up in rest stops in the highway, but these locations offer no places to sit generally, and a McDonalds does. So this could be a big advantage. The only problem is, will McDonalds actually make it available everywhere. Only making it available in Urban centers they will have direct competition from all the Starbucks and Borders all over most urban centers. At least this should engender some healthy competition and maybe even some addition parties getting into the game! I do think it motivates one to partonize a place if it has free or very cheap wifi, and maybe this is one of McDonalds hopes since there sales have been down recently. Eventually of course none of this stuff will matter because wifi will be ubiquitous - either provided for free as a public service or via municipal districts for a fee from non residents and free for residents, or perhaps via national carriers like AT&T and Tmobile. But you won’t have to go to just certain locations. Maybe they will start putting wifi on cell towers. Only problem being wifi doesn’t have near the range as even GSM. At least not yet. I’m sure a future version will have a much longer range.

Well, it looks like I have finally found the answer to my ongoing struggle to find a convergence device that includes a phone (preferably GSM) with cellular data capabilities, a PDA that has good syncing ability with Outlook, and Wifi. It seems like it should be a no-brainer for a company to develop such a device. Especially T-mobile, who has the Starbucks/Borders hotspot network, you would think, would want to capitalize on this and offer something that would let you do high-speed data when at Starbucks and lower-speed when on the train.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have yet to find such a device, but now, thanks to Gizmodo, we learn that Socket Communications will be coming out with a Wifi SDIO card! So what, you ask? Well, there are a bunch of PocketPC and PalmOS PDA-phones out there, but as I’ve mentioned, none do Wifi. But most if not all of the Pocket PC Phones as well as the Palm Tungsten C and T (although the C already has built-in Wifi) have an SDIO slot for expansion modules or memory. As far as I know, up until now, there’s been no wifi SD cards, this is the first. Of course, another format of card called Compact Flash, which is also used for memory, is large enough that there are numerous wifi options built using this format. Many PocketPC devices come with a Compact Flash slot, but no PocketPC Phones come with such a slot, only SD, at least currently.

What this means is that finally, we will have now a large choice of PocketPC Phone devices that will allow us to do wifi as well! Of course, we will have to wait about 6 weeks for it to come out, and the cost of the card and the PocketPC Phone together might top $700 in some cases depending on which carrier you are currently with and which one you will be switching to (or staying with as the case may be). But I have seen the Tmobile 2002 PocketPC Phone Edition for as low as $200 on eBay and if this card is discounted at all, you might be able to pick up a brand new solution for around $300, which is the same price as the Color Sidekick. Not a bad deal, I think!