Linkstew

AirPort Express

Damnit, I really want to get one of these for my new apartment, but the Apple store claims the estimated ship date is "Mid July." Maybe I'll try to wait it out with wires in the meantime. The biggest problem I see with this in its current state is the need for an iTunes remote control (which should be easy for Apple to implement), but in the meantime, I could probably solve it with my bluetooth phone + Clicker. Also, to keep adding to this, just wait for the AirPort enabled iPod which can interface with your AirPort Express. ;-)

Last night I played with my housemate's shiny new Palm Tungsten T3, and I was damn impressed. Now remember, the last Palm I've really played with was my dusty Palm Vx running Palm OS 3.5, so color and widescreen and bluetooth and Palm OS 5.2 and more was kind of a lot of enhancements thrown at me all at once, so it might not be as impressive to someone who's been actively following PDAs as it was to me.

I had some trouble getting used to the new graffiti input, and the ability to write on the screen took a little bit of getting used to, but once I get the general hang of things I was tapping around just like it was the same old Palm OS I knew and loved. The screen was beautiful and bright and the increased resolution made everything look a lot sharper. But the core features of the device aren't what I'm so much interested in talking about: What made me grin like a schoolboy were the connectivity features.

The T3 has bluetooth built in, and I was able to make the T3 use my my Nokia 3650 as a bluetooth modem and check my mail via IMAPS relatively trivially. Admittedly, my laptop should be able to use my phone as a bluetooth modem -- I just haven't tried it yet. I was able to effortlessly send a picture from my phone to the T3, and from the T3 to my laptop. I was able to make the T3 dial my phone. And I didn't play with it, but I'm sure iSync would do a bang-up job of integrating the T3 into my .mac systems (it'd be extra cool if it synced my safari bookmarks, but I doubt it does that... yet). Regardless, the connectivity was damn cool.

But there's still one thing that the T3 is missing that makes me want to hold out for another revision: Wifi. Sure, bluetooth + my phone can get me a net connection, but more often than not I'm somewhere with Wifi, and I'd like to be able to just get my Palm directly online with Wifi rather than resorting to bridging with a bluetooth modem. Sure, there's this Wifi SD card that's supposed to have Palm OS support later this year, and there's also this upcoming Wifi/memory SD combo card which would kill two birds with one stone, but I really don't want to have to carry around a separate card for Wifi that I'd probably just lose. I'd really like to see the Wifi integrated, and with the T3's introduction of the Palm OS toolbar, it'd be pretty trivial to put a Wifi on/off switch in there right next to the Bluetooth switch.

And then there are things missing from the connectivity puzzle: What I really want is an iPod with bluetooth, so I could use other devices as a remote control for my iPod, and so my other devices could be notified of the song currently playing on my iPod. It'd also be cool to have a Digital Camera with bluetooth, so I could transfer pictures to my other devices wirelessly (though with the ginormous resolutions that dcams can capture these days, that might not be practical), or use another device as a remote for my camera.

So if you're currently looking for a PDA, I'd definitly start by looking at a T3. Besides the lack of Wifi, the only other flaw I noticed was that an hour or so of playing with the bluetooth features drained the battery by about half.

Airport Extreme MIB: Information and Download

Oh, how exciting! Airports can be managed using SNMP now? (This is actually an important feature for a base station to have)

While moving later this week is going to suck more than the last few times I've done it, there is one thing that I'm actually looking forward to this time: While before I've always waited until the last possible minute to pack my computer(s), this time it won't matter. Thanks to only having a laptop at this point, when I'm finally ready to make the final transition, I'll just shut the lid and toss it in my backpack. I probably won't even turn it off. I really can't imagine going back to a desktop for any reason at this point.

How cell phones are changing our social habits

The one thing that I felt was missing was discussion of perceptions of cell phone users by those without cell phones.

Though Nintendo likes to tout their connectivity features in the form of the Game Boy Advance Link Cable and the GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable, I don't feel like people are actually worrying about those features when they buy Nintendo products, or even using those features at all.

What gives me that idea? Well, though one of my old roommates and I both had a GBA for a year, and though we each had several of the same games, we never played multiplayer games against each other. Why? Because we were too lazy to ever bother to buy a link cable. And of all the people I know with GBAs, none of them have a link cable, either. In fact, I'm the only one I know who even has a Game Boy Advance / GameCube link cable.

The solution? Nintendo just needs to bite the bullet and start bundling a Game Boy Advance link cable with every GBA SP they sell, and more importantly, a GameCube/Game Boy Advance link cable with every GameCube they sell. That way, there are no extra items to worry about buying to be able to take advantage of Nintendo's connectivity advantage, which will encourage people to buy games which take advantage of those features, which will encourage developers to make better use of those features.

Of course, it'd be even better if the next generation of these devices had wireless connectivity features built in, but I'm not optimistic about the chances of that happening.

The power in my building was insane last night. At around 9 o'clock, I noticed that the courtyard lights were out completely. My phone was powerless but my microwave was fine. My cable modem had power but my net still wasn't working (which is what got me investigating things in the first place). My TiVo was thankfully operational to record the season finale of Angel. The light in my living room acted like there was a brownout but the lights in the other rooms were unaffected.

So I just went in my room, turned off my light, and was merrily listening to music and playing games and writing on my laptop. But when I got ready to set my alarm and go to bed, I realized that the power had gone out completely at some point. My laptop's battery was at 80%, so I'd been without power for at least 30 minutes and had been completely oblivious to it. Gosh I love having a computer with an independent power supply.

I was inspired to write this article on a train ride back in February, and that's where I wrote most of it, too, without any internet to do any research. So of course, as soon as I plugged in I found articles like this one from more than two years ago, and I'm once again reminded that there's not an original thought in my head. But, I already wrote these 1,000 words, so here they are:

In my day, I've owned PDAs, mp3 players, a few Game Boys, a digital camera, and a cell phone. These days, I only carry my cell phone, my laptop, and my iPod with me regularly. The bulk of these devices is a reason that I stopped carrying some of them regularly, but it's not the primary reason.

At one point, I had wireless internet on my Palm V thanks to OmniSky (are they dead yet?). It was nice for what it was, but even then it seemed obvious to me that that was merely a temporary solution. Today, convergence is the name of the game, with more and more cell phones providing PDA functionality, and some are even providing gaming functionality.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the mobile devices (including cell phones, PDAs, game players, and to a lesser extent mp3 players and cheap digital cameras) are rapidly approaching a convergence. I won't be at all surprised if the more popular devices are going to be the ones that provide more features.

For that matter, the home entertainment market is hurtling towards convergence, too, with my PS2 able to play DVDs and connect to the internet.

Nintendo currently dominates the portable gaming market, with its Game Boy line being the only real contender. However, Nintendo has said on multiple occasions that they are a game company, and were only interested in supporting gaming with their devices. Witness the lack of DVD functionality in the Gamecube as a prime example of this. Generalizing this behavior and putting it in terms of what I've been talking about, it's unlikely that Nintendo is going to be very receptive to the convergence trend. In fact, I would be honestly surprised if Nintendo hopped on that bandwagon, and bundled phone or other features into the base Game Boy configuration. Sure, Nintendo may reintroduce peripherals like the Game Boy Camera or the Game Boy cell phone connector, but accessorizing is more Nintendo's habit than converging. (Because there's more money in accessories!)

Meanwhile, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony and Microsoft (and others) attempt to compete in the portable gaming space not with a dedicated game system, but rather, with a gaming platform piggybacked onto other devices, with the most likely target being cell phones. Heck, Nokia's upcoming N-Gage is just the first in what I expect to be a string of gaming platforms piggybacked on top of other devices. And I think, with that strategy, it is likely that someone will overtake Nintendo's dominance in the portable arena, primarily because I don't expect Nintendo to embrace the convergence that their future competitors will be offering. The more popular devices will be those that offer more features, so people will buy phones that also happen to be able to play games, and since their phones support the games, they'll buy the games for that platform.

So convergence of portable devices is coming, and I expect piggybacked platforms to have a pretty significant impact, but I'm not actually happy about that. And it's not just because I'm a Nintendo fanboy. No, I'm not happy about this because I subscribe to the philosophy of "do one thing and do it well." Witness my love of UNIX as proof of this. So I'm not happy about this convergence that I'm expecting because I'm afraid that we're going to end up with a sea of devices that do many things half assed. My iPod plays music incredibly well. My Game Boy plays games well. My phone answers calls well. My CellularGamePod, on the other hand...

I don't mind convergence. It's not a bad thing, and for people who can't afford multiple devices, it's probably a good thing. But I think a better solution that could be more significant than convergence in the long run is the idea of a "Personal Area Network."

• Components of a "Personal Area Network"
• A cellular link node for network/internet access. This could be a cell phone, a computer, or even a PDA with a wi-fi card installed.
• Bluetooth (or another, ideally less "nasty" protocol) to allow devices to communicate with each other. This would also enable network access for non-networked nodes in the network.
• An auto-discovery protocol. Preferably Rendevous, but (if I recall correctly) JINI might also do the trick.
• Some standard protocols for sharing standard data between devices.
• Then, add devices to yourself as you see fit. Some of these devices could be devices which offer more than one service.
• And most importantly, all of your data is stored on your local devices -- not accessed through the network.

The advantages and uses of such a PAN innumerable. You could access the contact list on your iPod with a borrowed cell phone to make a quick phone call. You could connect your laptop to the net using your cell phone or a friend's. Your Gamecube and Game Boy could talk to each other for connectivity. Two Game Boy owners could play each other without need for a cable. Take a digital picture and email it to a friend through your cell phone, or store the picture on your camera as identification, without using a shitty camera-phone. And on.

Basically, some devices would "offer" services, and other devices would "request" services. Phones both offer and request contact data. My Game Boy requests net. My laptop would offer and request a lot, depending on its current configuration (I'd certainly want my laptop to offer net if it were plugged into a cable modem, instead of messing around with a cellular link). And my iPod could offer music and conacts (though bluetooth doesn't have the bandwidth to stream music -- just one of many reasons this would ideally use a better protocol than bluetooth).

When my phone connects to a device offering contact data, it would browse that data remotely and not save a local copy, unless the owner of the data allowed it (though if the owner doesn't want you to download the data, he probably wouldn't let you browse it in the first place) and the browser of the data requested a copy of the data. This protects the owner of the data, and keeps each device from getting cluttered with data unnecessarilly.

I probably shouldn't be emphasizing contacts so much, because that's an example of pure data that should arguably be availble just from "the network", but that's a topic and an argument for another article. Better applications for this PAN technology are probably things like the digital camera services and the net services I described above.

The biggest unsolved problem in the sketch of a PAN I described above is security, but I can imagine numerous possible solutions to that problem. The first solution that popped into my mind was giving each piece of hardware a hardware based keypair. Don't make any way to get the "private" key from the hardware short of tearing the hardware apart and working some EE magic. Then make a "known_hosts" for your PAN, and your PAN can use something akin to ssh host key verification to allow access to your network. Of course, firmware upgrades would always have to be supported in case of flaws in the protocol... Something a little better than having to manage a "known_hosts" would be cool, but like I said, this is just one solution of many. And heck, for all I know, bluetooth might already have some way to do secure ad hoc networks, but I'm on a train right now without a PAN, so I can't connect my laptop to my phone and check. =)

I'm sure most of these ideas aren't very novel, but the entire vision is still my ideal future of digital devices. I wish I could do more than just hope things turn out this way.

So I'm sitting in CS 160 right now, and 6 people in front of me (out of about 30) are using laptops right now. In particular, these are laptops that are issued to us for a minimal deposit, for use in CS 160. And important to this story, these laptops comes with wireless cards.

So it's true that these laptops are being used "in CS 160," and I suppose that's good. But what's bad is what the people in front of me are using them for. Here's the rundown:

1. The girl in front of me is the only one who seems to have lecture notes open. Even better, she actually looked at the CS 160 newsgroup at one point. However, she's also on IM, and she's written at least two emails. All things considered, a 9/10.
2. The guy over by the wall to my right is browsing around some forum or another. He is also using IM.
3. A guy at the front right of the class is browsing around Amazon, and is also using IM.
4. A guy over at the left is looking at what looks like car manufacturer sites. Oh, and he's using IM.
5. Another guy over at the left is just using IM.
6. And the girl to my left has the dubious distinction of being the only one not using IM. Dubious because she's busy apparently planning a trip. Right now she's buying plane tickets, and earlier she was looking up restaurants and entertainment sites.

If I had my camera with me, I'd do something like Berkeleysucks.com's annoying people in class series, but I reckon that'd be even more disruptive and annoying than all the laptops put together.

What? Who, me? I'm just blogging. But it's not like I'm using a class laptop or anything -- I'm just using my trusty PowerBook! And the only reason I got my PowerBook out in the first place was so that I could experience the irony of writing this entry.

And for the record, I'm not on IM.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but it took me about 30 seconds longer than it should have to figure out what was "wireless" about my co-worker's "One Subject Wireless Notebook."

10 Evans is by far my least favorite classroom on campus. I'm pretty sure that my attendance rate for classes I've had in 10 Evans is somewhere around 25%, at best. So why do I hate 10 Evans?

1. It has uncomfortable plastic chairs.
2. They replaced the old uncomfortable blue plastic chairs with even more uncomfortable white plastic chairs that feel like a plank against my back.
3. It gets stuffy and hot, especially when the class in question is an overcrowded CS class. And when you jam it full of sweating CS students taking a test, it gets damp and hot.
4. It's concrete, so when the room gets noisy, it echoes like crazy. And on a rainy day, the room becomes dank, because there's nothing to absorb the moisture in the air.
5. It taunts me with AirBears reception, with my PowerBook displaying a periodic signal, but I've yet to find a seat in the room where my laptop can get a consistent enough signal to give me net.

I dislike 10 Evans so much that I don't go to classes there. I dislike 10 Evans so much that I'll leave tests without double checking my answers just to get out of there. I dislike 10 Evans so much that I left my review session (for a class that I didn't attend after mid-march because it was in 10 Evans) today early because the chair I was sitting in put a kink in my back.

Thankfully, it looks like I won't have a class in 10 Evans next fall for the first time in two years.

Oh hell yeah -- I'm sitting outside the terrace cafe right now, freely logged on to the campus AirBears network using my Calnet ID. It's an absolutely gorgeous day, too, which just makes this that much better.

The coverage is very limited right now, and the connection stalls a lot (especially on something like an ssh session -- stateless web requests seem to be pretty responsive.), but you know what? Freely accessible net on campus is freely accessible net on campus, and I'll be damned if I'm going to complain about it.

Anyway, if you're a Berkeley student and have a laptop with a wireless net card, you should check it out!

(On a side note, I occasionally get AirBears reception in 10 Evans, which transforms that from being one of my least favorite lecture halls to being one of my favorite.)