2009: A Year in Review

I don’t usually go down for end-of-year reviews, but 2009 is a special case. It’s heralded huge shifts in the technology industry, and shows us there’s plenty of promise for the coming decade.

Content On Demand

This year has seen an explosion of on-demand streaming services making use of new high-speed broadband connections. Missed your favorite show? Simply head to BBC iPlayer, ITV Player or 4OD (or Hulu if you’re from across the pond) . Need to listen to that brand new track your friend is raving about? Simply fire up your client for Spotify or last.fm. For the first time people can pick and choose when they want to listen to or view their media, freeing the consumer from the whims of  TV Executives and Radio Producers.

The Dawn of the Microblog

2009 saw an explosion for a service called Twitter, a service offering users to post whatever they liked within 140 characters and enjoy the exposure of the entire globe. Some users tell us what they had for breakfast, others use it for spam. However, Twitter found a huge nieche for spreading news fast, as was shown by the fact users of rthe service knew about the death of Michael Jackson long before any major news stations reacted.

The service has also led to an explosion of spin-offs thanks to it’s comprehensive API, leading to sophisticated clients that allow users to share links, photos and other content with each other instantly. It’s integration into more established social networking sites such as Facebook and the adoption of the service by major news corporations and celebrities saw it reach critical mass, and it looks set to continue into the next decade providing up-to-the-second information for all who use it.

App Explosion

If 2009 will be remembered for just one thing, it will almost certainly be remembered for Apple’s decision to create an App Store for it’s flagship product, the Apple iPhone. In under a year over a billion ‘apps’ have been downloaded both for free and for cash. These ranged from games, maps, guides, dictionaries to even musical instruments, mosquitos and toolkits!  Anything you could possibly name – there’s an app for it. Yes – even that!

This could herald a huge beginning for the adoption of the kinds of smartphones that Blackberry and Palm have been trying to find a market for for years. HTC and Motorola already have Android phones set to gather market share, Nokia is now using the Maemo platform for the N900 and Microsoft is rewriting Windows Mobile to keep up the pace on Apple’s highly successful product, so 2010 could be an exciting year for a highly diverse and competitive market, with potential for Linux-based platforms to make real gains on commercial equivalents.

Netbooks Continue to Climb

If 2008 was the dawn of the netbook (which surprised everyone – even Asus, and they created the concept in the first place!) then 2009 was the year they started to appear more and more frequently in cafes, trains, buses and schools. Phone companies were giving them away free with cheap mobile broadband deals (a truly 2008 technology!). Microsoft stirred up considerable controversy by claiming that over 90% of netbooks were running Windows. The present assumption is that this may be the case over in the US, but here in Europe it’s more a 60-40 split. Linus hasn’t lost the war for netbooks yet, and with the emerging technologies based on Moblin and Ubuntu NBR Linux may yet make a resurgance back into this market.

GPS Goes Mainstream

This year saw phones coming with GPS as standard, and 2010 promises to herald in GPS chips for netbooks and laptops. We will have to see whether this comes with fruition, but from personal experience being able to quickly check where I am on Google Maps using the iPhone’s GPS chip has saved my skin on more than one occasion! It’s a subtle technology that could soon see services such as Google Lattitude seeing a much larger userbase.

Open Source Becomes Big News

Over the past year the world of open source and free software has seen more exposure than ever before. With doubts over Windows 7 before it was launched Ubuntu in particular benefitted from heavy publicity. Whether it was some cool new technology such as Ulteo or a forum bust-up between Gnome and GNU it received plenty of publicity. Big companies such as Intel, Nokia and Motorola started to take Linux seriously and incorporate it into their products. 2009 may not have been the year of everyone switching to a Linux desktop, but it could herald the march of low-powered Linux-based devices in the comind decade.

In Summary…

In summary this year has brought information truly to people’s finger-tips. Searches are in real-time, and information is up-to-the-minute, short-and-sweet. Media is something you can enjoy anywhere and at any time, and there are rumours that the Tablet PC concept Bill Gates always used to go on about might just come to fruition. 2009 was a big year for technology, and I eagerly await the coming decade.

[Via http://bjm1904.wordpress.com]

India's food price inflation in high gear

There has been no shortage since November of news reports and analyses about the food inflation. The 19% annual rise in fact masks widespread individual urban centres’ price shocks and individual food item trends. I have tried to unpack the year-on-year ‘national’ food inflation number using data from the Ministry Of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution – Department Of Consumer Affairs (Price Monitoring Cell). My guess is that this data is an under-estimate but is useful for spotting trends.

I collected prices for the 36 cities tracked by the PM Cell, monthly from 2007 December. Based on a small basket of staples (rice, wheat, atta, tur dal, sugar, gud, tea, milk, potato, onion, salt) a crude index shows that in 33 out of 36 cities, the 24 month (07 Dec to 09 Dec) rise in prices of items in this basket is more than 24%, and that in 23 cities it is more than 50%.

Food inflation 2009 over 2007 in Indian cities

About price increases in rural settlements I can find no organised information at all, although direct experience in western Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa tells me that a staples basket can cost up to 2-3% more than in urban areas. (Agmarknet collects and maintains detailed mandi prices for farm produce but there is no comparable effort for rural retail food staples.)

The National Sample Survey 61st Round (2004 July-2005 June) on ‘Household Consumer Expenditure in India’ put down the finding that out of every rupee that the average rural Indian spent on household consumption, 55 paise was spent on food and mainly:
18 paise was spent on cereals
8 paise on milk & milk products
6 paise on vegetables
5 paise on sugar, salt & spices
5 paise on beverages, refreshments, processed food, purchased cooked meals, etc

Of the non-food expenditure 10 paise was spent on fuel for cooking and lighting.
I have tried to maintain this weightage in my calculation, but it is really no more than a crude reckoning because I haven’t been able to spend the time to clean up the publicly available data – querying the website database of Dacnet (Dept of Agriculture and Cooperation) or FCAMin returns report formats that are terribly messy, even though they contain useful data. (Although I think there may be differences even between these for the same foods and same date ranges.)

Based on what I have seen and heard on the field in Karnataka, Goa and western Maharashtra (and learnt about Gujarat and eastern UP from others) the available food basket seems to be shrinking (the so-called ‘coarse’ cereal group is conspicuously less), and where families have young and teenaged children there is pressure to buy processed and packaged snack foods (which is really a blight in our small rural markets). There are all sorts of oddities about the form that food takes in these markets – the price of a 50 gram pack of biscuits for example (Parle Glucose is the standard) has hardly moved in the last 3-4 years yet at the same point-of-purchase end, look at the way the prices of ground wheat have moved.

Then there’s fuel and transport to account for, more about which you’ll find here. This question needs much more work in 2010 to strengthen some of the reliable data we have with updates, and to try to build in what we see and hear and sense from conversations with those who live and work in all those tahsils and talukas and blocks and mandals. I feel very strongly that we are lacking in our data the presence and impact of the many linkages that connect and influence the rural farming/labour household. Many of the measures we have have served us well but I think need to be supplemented – how to integrate the lessons and findings from the comprehensive National Family Health Survey, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the many studies into the income-providing measures of NREGA.

Even though we worry about what the rural/urban poor household must spend on, the attraction to buy mobile phones amazes me. I have met young men who earn around Rs 4,000 a month but who have bought Samsung mobile phones costing Rs 5,000! Imagine spending more than a month’s income on a phone, I asked them, but they saw nothing worrying about their expenditure. Retailers who sell mobile phones used to keep the low cost and hardy Nokia phones which 3 years ago cost around Rs 1,700-1,800 (mine is still working), but not any longer, or they work at discouraging those who ask for the relatively cheaper phones. Much more than the hundred-dollar laptop we need the thousand-rupee mobile phone.

The image is of a chart I made for the project group I work with (part of the National Agricultural Innovation Project, it’s called Agropedia and you can read more about it here). This chart helps point to some patterns (you can download the hi-res image here). I’m curious for example about Gujarat, whose grain and commodity traders have a long and murky history of hoarding. The North-Eastern cities could be insulated to some extent from the regional transport subsidy (road and rail). Cities in the Deccan are relatively better off than North Indian cities. The big difference between Chandigarh and Mandi is puzzling.

In his hugely interesting paper, ‘India And The Great Divergence: Assessing The Efficiency Of Grain Markets In 18th and 19th Century India‘, Roman Studer (University of Oxford, Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, Number 68, November 2007) has written: “Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, the grain trade in India was essentially local, while more distant markets remained fragmented. This is not to say that no grain was traded over longer distances, but the extent was very limited, as the prices from some 36 cities all over India still exhibited various characteristics of isolated markets.”

“First, annual price fluctuations were extremely high. Second, differences in price levels between markets were very pronounced and persisted until well into the nineteenth century. Third, apart from neighbouring villages or cities, price series from different markets did not show comovements at all.” Studer looked at century-old data, but we still have 36 cities to tell us about staple food retail prices! Also, the three characteristics he mentions can be seen today too.

Happy New Year!

[Via http://makanaka.wordpress.com]

Logic Wireless Logic Bolt packs a projector, two SIMs and a TV

Both Samsung and LG are testing the waters for a mobile phone with a projector but there’s a third underdog competitor – Logic Wireless and their Logic Bolt, which recently got updated with slightly improved specs.

The Logic Wireless Logic Bolt v1.5 offers quad-band GSM support with not one but two SIM cards. It has a 2.6″ QVGA screen, which might or might not be a touchscreen – the Logic Wireless website is very stingy and ambiguous when it comes to information.

For example, the “TV & FM Radio” section of the features page says “Watch TV and play FM Radio”. This video presentation is a bit more affirming, claiming both a touchscreen and Analog TV

We know what you’re thinking – dual SIM and Analog TV and those looks equate the likes of the exquisite NOKLA brand. Strangely enough, Logic Wireless is actually a small 19-member team based in Arizona.

Anyway, the Logic Bolt has a built-in projector (unlike LG GW820 eXpo, where the projector is an addon). The projector has a VGA resolution and the projected image is between 34″ and 64″ in diagonal from a 1-2m distance. The 1200mAh battery is good for 2 hours (info from the site) or 1.5 hours (info from the presentation). Like we said, ambiguous.

The Logic Wireless Logic Bolt offers Word, Excel, PowerPoint and a PDF viewers, a 3MP main camera and a 1MP video call camera, up to 3 hours of talk time and up to 250 hours of standby. There’s a composite video and VGA inputs, though we assume they would need some sort of adapter to pull that off (seriously, if that kind of information isn’t in the Features page, we are not quite sure what should go there).

You can get the Logic Bolt v1.5 from RedMarket for 475 US dollars (330 euro) or the Logic Bolt v1.0 for 399 US dollars (277 euro), which has pretty much the same specs, save for the slightly smaller screen, larger 1800mAh battery, though strangely the same standby, talk and projection times.

____________________________________
This post is sponsored by:

ASPA Computers Limited
Unit I, No. 1, Hayr Road, Three Kings, Auckland
Tel: (09) 625-2068, Fax: (09) 625-2069
Mobile: 0211138880, henry@aspa.co.nz
Website and Blog

[Via http://vodafonemobileiphonerepairunlock.wordpress.com]

15 hardware changes that would have made N900 physically irresistible - [15 essential hardware features for its successor]

The N900 is a great phone, but it is (as Nokia themselves have more or less said) a work in progress. I’ll say it again, it’s step 4 of 5 to Maemo glory.

Software evolution to one side (see firmware update wishlist for N900),  understandably, this early adopter product isn’t physically “perfect” for mass market.

I.E. No point wasting resources on features not necessary to attract your target audience.

So what would the N900 have needed or at least what would the N900’s successor need to be physically irresistible on the hardware front?

Below I’ve quickly listed out top 10 physical attributes the N900’s successor needs to be inexorably alluring (physically) to your 2010 smartphone consumer. Areas I’ve omitted I’m assuming meet the N900s standard, e.g. 1) stay with the black theme 2) screen resolution 3) expandable memory 4) Notification lights etc.

I’ve included 11-15 but stopped there as I could go on forever adding features I’d like to see in the N900′s successor (continuous autofocus, placement of buttons/ports/additional buttons/more in built memory/oleophobic screen etc etc etc).

This, as usual, is just an opinion. It’s mixed with a touch of personal preference , but mostly filled with what Nokia needs to do to satisfy the market’s demand from a 2010 smartphone leading the pack.

As such, 1-10 is ordered in what I reckon is the necessary priorty of features that would make the N900’s successor undeniably physically desirable, leaving only OS of choice as the final deciding factor (which by then, Maemo 6 will have made its appearance]

1. Capacitive Screen (with multitouch).
   1. I will not go into resistive vs capacitive, except that for the market the N900’s successor is trying to reclaim, it MUST have a capacitive display, and that’s already been confirmed as well as multitouch.
   2. Capacitive is essential to compliment the “feather touch” nature expected of UIs. It’s also necessary so Engadget won’t spit on it.
   3. Multitouch is necessary for multiple key input used when typing on virtual keyboard, gaming and finger gestures.
2. Needs to be much slimmer.
   1. The concept of what size is acceptable has changed radically.
   2. It’s more acceptable for phones to be long (New LG chocolate) wide (TGO1) but not fat.
   3. If it’s long or wide, it’s OK. As long as it’s not thick.
   4. Ideally anything around 11mm or under. If there’s going to be a keyboard of sorts, try to stay within 14mm
3. AMOLED display
   1. Go that extra distance with the better brightness, contrast and vividness
   2. Generally consumes less electricity (could contribute slightly towards battery life)
4. Increase screen size – [Maybe 3.7", maybe at least don't go below 3.5"]
   1. The previous 4.13″ Nokia tablets had the perfect screen size for viewing the web on the go.
   2. Comined with the 800×480 screen, you hardly ever had to zoom in to view fine text.
   3. Though screen size (at the moment) is the main limiting factor in size, with minimal borders/space wastage, it’s possible to have a 4.13″ fit more or less in the N900’s foot print.
   4. N900 dimension – 111×60mm.
   5. 4.13″ [800X480] approx 90×55mm
5. Made mostly of metal -minimise the plastic
   1. This will be a high luxury item.
   2. Metal phones are intrinsically more appealing than plastic ones.
6. Keyboard – 4 row
   1. If we are going to have a keyboard, can we please have a 4 row
   2. 4th row must be for numbers
   3. More space must be used for the keyboard. I get that you’d want some screen interaction, but you’d save so much more time overall if you could have an extremely efficient text input with a well designed and thought out keyboard.
   4. I won’t go into keyboard layout, except for the love of god, do not hide basic punctuation as secondary symbols.
7. Xenon Flash
   1. I’m hazarding a guess that the majority of photos the average consumer takes are of people [Friends/Family/Self/Spycam haha]
   2. On that presumption, Xenon Flash is absolutely necessary to make sure that in even low light conditions you can light up the scene and freeze the action.
   3. You can also keep Dual LED for video light. Don’t need to pick one or the other – have both.
8. Increased MegaPixel count
   1. Nothing to do with picture quality, just keeping up with the times.
   2. It’s more marketable and you won’t fall prey to “Same 5MP cam as 3 years ago” comments.
9. Higher resolution TV out. 720p at least.
   1. The N900 has proven itself to be a fantastic home media centre, plugging into the TV via TV-out functionality.
   2. HD output is a must for 2010.
10. Compass/Magnetometer
    1. Assists in navigation of maps to provide real time Map orientation
    2. Gives the option of Augmented Reality style applications.

11. Solid, spring loaded slide
    1. If we are going to have a physical QWERTY keyboard, it would be nice to have some kind of mechanism to quickly snap open and reveal the keyboard.
12. Gesture areas
    1. These are spaces left or right of the screen (or both)
    2. Gesture areas can be configured to contextual function and may light up accordingly, but most of the time are invisible.
    3. Extend UI navigation without taking up space on the screen.
    4. e.g. Going back/forward/selecting menu/could possibly even work as green-red call/end buttons as well as dedicated music/media controls.
13. Higher capacity battery
    1. Go back up to 1500mAh
    2. Possibly increase that?
    3. It’s great to have fantastic features but even better to know you don’t have to ration their use because the battery won’t last a full day. (N900’s battery life is fair, though I’m still pretty much in honey moon period so using it extremely heavily)
    4. You can of course get accessories like the Proporta Turbo Charger or a spare battery to keep yourself going.
14. Wide angle lens and improved low light sensor
    1. Basically the N86’s optic prowess. Similar to #9 but this one actually does improve the quality of images that you’ll take.
    2. Wide angle lets you get more of your subject in the frame, composing better pictures – improved low light sensor means that you can take great photos when flash isn’t an option [e.g. distant subjects/through glass/situation of no flash photography allowed, often indoors with low light)
15. Totally flat screen, no dust cave bezel
    1. Raised bezel accumulates dust and dirt
    2. Raised bezel interferes with finger swiping
    3. Make the bezel (if there will be one) flat and flush with the screen

Processor/RAM/Graphics card – can’t give definite specification on what I’d want, but at least improve on what we’ve already got.

[Via http://mynokiablog.com]

Nokia 6303 Classic

Ponsel 3G kamera 3,2 mp

Kalian punya budget minim mau punya hp 3G?? Ada nih, ponsel baru keluaran nokia.. serinya 6303 classic.. Ponsel ini dibekali kamera 3,2 mp+LED flash… Lumayan untuk ponsel yang tidak perlu merogoh kantong lebih dalam.. fitur lain, adanya Nokia Maps sebagai media navigasi.. Harga ponsel ini dibanderol berkisar 1,5 juta an.. bagaimana? sekarang pilihan tergantung pada kalian.. posted by : Rezky T

[Via http://ngeliathandphone.wordpress.com]

Burlington Gets Nokia Call for 135,000SF

By Joe Clements

BURLINGTON—After a difficult stretch throughout suburban Boston, this community on Route 128 is closing out the year on an upbeat note in the form of a 135,000-sf lease renewal by Nokia Networks at 5 Wayside Rd. Owned by Texas-based investor Behringer Harvard, the four-story office building was the first of two interconnected structures developed to house Nokia’s regional operations when it opened in 1999, but the competitive office market had the anchor tenant eyeing other options after subleasing much of the companion property at 15 Wayside Rd.

“It’s a good keep for Burlington,” Cushman & Wakefield Executive Director Mark Roth tells The Real Reporter in acknowledging Nokia has determined the best move is to remain at its longtime home. Roth advised the firm in an extensive space search, while the landlord was represented by Jason Levendusky and Andrew Majewski of CB Richard Ellis/New England.

Roth declined to discuss terms such as length or rental rate. There has been significant price erosion in Burlington during the past two years after rates briefly spiked around $33 per sf, with some estimates putting the current average in the $27-per-sf range. The departure of IBM to Littleton in a consolidation move, plus Sun Microsystems’ decision to sell its landmark campus abutting Route 3 have further dampened Burlington’s luster of late, making the Nokia renewal even more significant. The deal complements last month’s commitment by Avid Technologies to relocate its headquarters from Tewksbury to the former Sun property, now known as Network Drive, at which the firm will occupy close to 200,000 sf.

Nokia’s market search was not an indication of dissatisfaction with 5 Wayside Rd., Roth stresses, but rather a fiscally prudent step to assess viable alternatives in what has become a decidedly tenant-friendly environment. “It’s a beautiful building that works well” for Nokia, says Roth. Behringer Harvard has been a responsible landlord, he says, and the location is favorable thanks to its proximity to Route 128 and downtown Boston, plus a variety of nearby amenities, including the recently opened Wayside Commons lifestyle retail center that features a mix of high-end restaurants and retailers.

Totaling 270,000 sf, 5 and 15 Wayside Ave. were constructed by local landlord Gutierrez Co. and acquired by Behringer Harvard in 2006 for $82.2 million. Excess space at 15 Wayside Rd. was subleased by Nokia to Cognos and Intergen. It is unclear how much term is left on those subleases at that five-story property, which came on line in 2001. Besides 5 and 15 Wayside Ave., known collectively as the Burlington Office Park, Behringer Harvard owns the Ferncroft Corporate Center in Middleton, another well-regarded office property also purchased in 2006.

[Via http://therealreporter.wordpress.com]

Отново tiwtter беше хакнат

Актуализация: Актуализация от статута блог кикотене: “Twitter на DNS записите са били временно компрометирана, но вече са фиксирани. Ние търсим в основната причина, и ще се актуализира с повече информация, по-скоро. “

–

Ние сме все още в шок над това, което току-що окаже. Twitter ипотпал е само рязка рана. А група, които твърдят, че е “Cyber иранската армия” пое Twitter и остана своя текст, лога и изображения на сайта.

Сигурност Twitter на резюме е силно повреден през юли, когато хакери откраднал секретни документи компания изобразяващи неговите операции. Но дори и това не е взел за определяне на сайта. Това е също имаше своя дял на сигурността експлоатира и не ипотпал китовете.

Малко да се сравнява това, което се случи тази вечер. Дори и ако е гражданин на трета страна DNS атака, Twitter все още получава насинено око.

Това е неприемливо за една от световните топ 20-те най-посетен сайтове. Необходимо е да се отговорността за тази ситуация (без значение дали това е в рамките на нервна възбуда или в рамките на трета страна), както и по-подробно обяснение е оправдано. Twitter също трябва да намери начин да се уверя, че това никога не се случва отново.

Ние сме достигнали, за да не само нервна възбуда, но на самите хакери за коментар.

[Via http://ipotpalex.wordpress.com]