GPS to become commonplace and far more accurate

First it was Nokia that started giving away the Satnav software for free. Now Google is offering free Satnav software for Android phones in UK. Its already been available in US for quite some time and the response is generally positive.

According to comScore, the use cellphones for Satellite Navigation is becoming more common in Europe. According to them, in February, 21.1 million consumers in five large European markets -- Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy -- used their cellphones for navigation, 68 percent more than a year ago. This compares to 20.4 million personal navigation devices sold in those markets in 2008 and 2009 in total, according to research firm GfK.

I talked about Satellite based Internet before but today we will focus on satellite based GPS systems.

The GPS system, which was developed way back in 1989 for and by the military has been used by general public since the year 2000. Its has become very common in the last few years.

The GPS we know and love is part of a larger family of systems called Global Navigational Satellite Systems or GNSS. The following are the members of the GNSS; GPS is the USA system, GLONASS is the Russian system, Galileo is the European system and Compass is the Chinese system

The following is from the IET Magazine:

Satellite navigation systems take their location cues from 30 GPS satellites that circle the Earth twice a day transmitting status, date and time, and orbital information. Soon there will be around 100 satellites to lock on to as GPS is joined by global constellations from Europe (Galileo), Russia (GLONASS), and China (Compass).

GPS wasn't built to help us find our way to the shops - it was a Cold War project funded by the US Department of Defense to ensure that nuclear submarines could surface and target their missiles accurately. There are strategic rumblings about the new satellite constellations too, but the current consensus is that civilians have most to gain from more accurate and reliable location and tracking applications. That's if receiver designers can get the power consumption under control.

Russia's GLONASS system used to be famous for its satellites failing faster than they were launched, but since last month it has had 24 functioning satellites in orbit. Meanwhile, Europe's much-delayed Galileo system will have 14 satellites operating by 2014, according to the European Commission, with the full 30 available by 2017. The US GPS system is being modernised to become GPS III by 2013, with additional navigation signals for both civilian and military use. Information about China's Compass system is sketchier - it was going to be a regional system but is now understood to be global.

'All this activity is great news because whatever the application, there will potentially be multiple constellations to get a position fix from, which will help with signal integrity in safety-critical environments such as maritime, aviation or rail, and accuracy for mobile phone users in urban areas,' says Andrew Sage, director of Helios, a consultancy specialising in satellite navigation.

A GPS receiver should be able to 'see' at least four GPS satellites anytime, anywhere on the globe and establish three position coordinates (latitude, longitude, and altitude). But in city streets hemmed in by tall buildings, a receiver is unlikely to be able detect more than two satellites and the signals will often have bounced off structures.

'For the average pedestrian, the position fix can be a long way out and very unpredictable,' says Sage. 'Most users don't see that today because GPS receivers match us to maps and smooth the errors out. But if you are walking around a city and not on a road in a car, multi-path reflections are a problem.'

The more satellites visible from within these 'urban canyons', the easier it is to carry out consistency checks on the received signals. 'Even when you can't isolate the multipath-contaminated signals, the more signals you have, the more your errors average out,' says Dr Paul Groves, lecturer in global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), navigation and location technology at UCL.

Better GNSS integrity would enable new applications, such as road-user charging, enforcing bail conditions and pay-as-you-drive insurance. 'Clearly, if position information might be used as legal evidence, it has to be reliable,' says Groves.

The delayed arrival of Galileo and the resurrection of GLONASS have complicated matters for receiver makers. Galileo was designed to offer the simplest possible upgrade path from GPS to a dual-constellation system. Agreements were made to put the carrier frequencies of the main open services in the same part of the spectrum as GPS, at around 1575MHz, so receivers could share the same radio, analogue components and antenna. Both systems also send their signals using a spread-spectrum code-division multiple-access (CDMA) approach. GLONASS uses a frequency-division multiple-access coding technique (FDMA) and a main open-service carrier frequency of 1602.2MHz.

The complete IET Magazine article can be read here.

There is another interesting article titled 'GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Compass: What GNSS Race? What Competition' here. Interesting analysis.

Video Calling: Boon or Bane?

When 3G was launched, the operators were clueless as to what 3G can do. The only way according to them to sell 3G was to to market 'Video calling'.

I am not sure how many of you have used Video calling, but I love it. Shame that the operators have priced it so ridiculously that I only used it when I had them inclusive in my package. Otherwise paying £0.50 per min seems exorbitant to me.

We have so many other options like Google Chat with Video and Skype Video chat available which is very convenient (and far much cheaper) according to me. Skype client is available on mobiles but still Video is not included. Its just matter of time before Video calling is included part of the VoIP client. All handset manufacturers are scared to include the feature so as to avoid the ire of operators. Maybe we will have to leave it to iPhone again to break this barrier as well.

The following is from Reuters news article:

Research in Motion Ltd says it is far from certain that video will become the "killer app" that defines smartphones, but even so the BlackBerry maker says developing more efficient delivery is necessary to prevent video from choking airwaves.

The popularity of feature-rich smartphones such as the BlackBerry, Apple's iPhone, and Motorola's Droid has surged, but they use as much as 30 times as much bandwidth as regular mobile phones to run the applications, or "apps," that make them so popular.

The surge in traffic triggered by video and other apps has led to more dropped calls and choppy service. As video on smartphones becomes more popular, it is leading to more congestion, and forcing carriers to spend billions to upgrade networks and buy more wireless spectrum.

"I still don't know and I don't think anyone knows if video is a killer app for smartphones," RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said at a conference hosted by a unit of Toronto Dominion Bank on Friday. "I don't particularly think it is."

Lazaridis said that even if video did not become the defining app for smartphones, it is already presenting a big challenge to networks.

Analysts have praised Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM for its relatively bandwidth-light BlackBerrys, which route most emails through the company's own servers. This is a legacy of the company's earlier days when it was seeking a faster, more secure mobile email service.

RIM also sends web browsing, Facebook, Twitter, and data from a wide number of BlackBerry apps through its own servers.

That makes browsing and using apps on a BlackBerry three to eight times as efficient bandwidth-wise as on the devices of RIM's rivals, said Lazaridis.

"What that means for the carrier, though, is after they have committed all those billions of dollars on new network technology and new network spectrum, they can have three BlackBerrys using the same network capacity as one of the other smartphones."

Lazaridis said RIM would invest more in technology that provides efficiencies to carriers, including when it comes to video.

He pointed to RIM's 2006 acquisition of SlipStream, which specializes in data acceleration, compression and network optimization technology.

"They had some amazing technologies for compressing everything from web content, documents, and video. So, you never know, the research that we do is very important, it's always borne fruit and we are hoping that we can continue to ... provide tangible efficiencies to the carriers."

Speech for Mobile to become big industry

Its interesting that its not only Google that experimenting with Voice Recognition and Voice search but a whole lot of other players. Earlier I blogged about Real time Speech Translation and another one was the Voicemail search. Google's search App also allows to search using voice rather than by entering text.

SpeechTek Europe 2010 is a new conference that promises to make everyone aware of the new Speech Technologies and their application in Mobile and other domains.

From EarthTimes:

Produced by the publishers of the industry’s best-read magazine, Speech Technology, SpeechTEK Europe is the sister of the highly successful New York annual event series and aims to capitalise on the wealth of speech innovators based here in Europe.

The conference has been developed by a Steering Committee which comprises some of the industry’s most respected thought leaders. Here they share their insights into the future for speech technologies, how they are developing, and where they will be used.

Loquendo’s Vice President of International Sales, Rosanna Duce, predicts that voice control will be a major growth area in the next five years:

“One important emerging speech technology is undoubtedly the voice control of all kinds of devices, for example, PDAs, mobile phones, DVD players.” She comments, “These technologies are currently being expanded and upgraded to allow all functions to be accessed using voice, thus eliminating the need to use a keyboard. Consumer demand seems to suggest that the option to dictate text messages will be a major source of growth in this area, as will be the reading of incoming messages by a TTS application bundled with the phone/PDA.”

Nava Shaked, CEO of Business Technologies, agrees,

“The combination of voice search engines, internet and mobile is a real opportunity for speech technology growth and influence. This includes the introduction of previously unseen applications for voice user interface and transcription. The combination of voice and video is also promising and will be inevitable in our interaction with multimedia.”

James Larson, the Conference Chair, supports these views,

“Multimodal applications on mobile devices will enable customers to not only speak and listen, but to also read and type and use additional modes in interaction. These apps will be easy to learn, easy to use, and much more natural than current voice-only apps or GUI-only apps. They will always be available, and customers can use them wherever they are, not just at their desktop or in their car.” He concludes, “Multimodal applications on mobile devices will dramatically change how we interact with appliances - TV, radio, environmental control - with the internet, and with other people.”

The SpeechTEK Europe conference programme explores these trends and the implications for the industry as a whole. Real world applications and case studies are a particular feature of the event, so delegates can see for themselves how speech is working in a variety of different environments, how to select and implement the technology, and how to evaluate its performance.

The full SpeechTEK Europe programme is available at: www.speechtek.com/europe2010 along with registration information, details of registration savings, and free entry exhibition tickets.

Mobile Apps market to grow to '$17.5bn by 2012'

A study done for Getjar, the world's second biggest app store, said the market will grow to $17.5bn (£12bn) in the next two years.

The study claimed downloads would climb from 7bn last year to 50bn by 2012 - a 92% year-on-year increase.

It found there had been a gold rush with the number of app stores rising from four before 2008 to 48 today.

The study also suggests Apple's domination of the market could be challenged.

The report titled, 'Sizing up the Global Mobile Apps Market' by Chetan Sharma is available to download here.

Some more interesting stats from the report as follows:

• The overall mobile apps downloads are expected to increase from over 7 billion in 2009 to almost 50 billion by 2012 growing at the rate of 92% CAGR
• The revenue from mobile apps which includes both paid downloads and revenue from advertising and virtual goods is expected to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to $17.5 billion by 2012 at the rate of 62% CAGR.
• The overall global subscriptions base is expected to exceed 5 billion by the end of 2010 with over 27% of them being data subscribers
• Non-carrier appstores jumped from a mere 8 to 38 last year
• In 2009, advertising contributed almost 12% to the overall apps revenue.
• The price range of applications in various stores can vary from $0.99 to $999.

Ringtones to help you in your daily life..

I am sure you must have heard of Music being used to torture terrorists or hardened crminals. Now you can have complete different use of music or ringtones in this case. “Well . . . I can definitely feel a bit of adrenalin,” says Yukari Sendo, savouring the mobile phone ringtone like a fine wine, “but it really doesn’t make me want to do any housework.” She flicks through a menu of alternative tunes and settles on one that offers to improve her skin tone through the power of alpha-waves. Ms Sendo and her friend Ayaka Wakabayashi are among an army of young Japanese drawn to the allure of “therapeutic ringtones” — a genre of melodies that promises to ease a range of day-to-day gripes, from chronic insomnia to a rotten hangover. Japan is no stranger to bizarre phone fads but the popularity of the ringtones is perhaps surprising given the flimsiness of the science behind them. Much of the tones’ credibility rests in the solid reputation of Matsumi Suzuki, the head of the Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, an eight-year-old subsidiary of the Japan Acoustic Laboratory.

Mr Suzuki’s adventures in the realm of mood-altering ringtones follow a career at the National Research Institute of Police Science, where he made award-winning advances in the field of voiceprints. One of his proudest achievements was the development of a synthetic mosquito noise that is inaudible to Japan’s over-60s but supposedly discourages teenagers from “congregating in parks at midnight”.

A spokesman for Index, the giant Japanese mobile phone content provider that sells Mr Suzuki’s ringtones, explains that while there is a shortage of actual experimentation, “the number of downloads suggests the ringtones must be working to a certain extent”. Index’s other innovations include an iPhone application that translates your dog’s bark; the “Bowlingual” automatic canine interpreter draws on an database of woofs from dozens of species.

The first therapeutic tone, a high-energy rhythm, tested for The Times by Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi, was supposed to provide a sudden burst of impetus to sluggardly housewives. Yukari and Ayaka had their doubts.

The tone that is said to improve skin mixes a burst of electro-Schubert with woodland noises such as birdsong and streams. “I suppose it might subconsciously make you think of washing your face, and that is good for the skin,” said Ayaka. “At least, it would certainly send you towards the bathroom.”

Ms Sendo and Ms Wakabayashi were marginally more impressed by the sleep-inducing and sleep-preventing tones, suspiciously akin to a lullaby and a dance track. The one with most practical use, they concluded, was the tone that scares away crows — the sinister jungle ravens that terrorise the dawn streets of Tokyo by pecking at bags of rubbish.

Mr Suzuki’s latest ringtone has been timed to coincide with the Japanese hay fever season. The Ohana Sukkiri Melody emits a series of sounds at different frequencies “so that people can choose the sound that resonates most to their sinus and causes pollen lodged there to fall from the nasal cavity”.

Index admitted that it had not conducted any research on how great a pollen deluge would be induced by the ringtone but said that it was “generally understood” that resonance would help hayfever sufferers if they brought the phone close to their noses.

When it came to testing the hangover chaser ringtone, Yukari and Ayaka were relieved from experimental duties. This popular application works through what Index describes as a careful selection of “pulse-melodies” chosen for their astonishing atunement to the body’s “medical rhythms”. Testers concluded that a fried breakfast, though less portable, still had the edge.

How to avoid network choking in the future?

If you are looking for an answer to this question then you wont find an answer to that here. Probably no one really knows a complete answer to this question right now. A simple answer would be to have a mix of the Macro cells, Micro cells and Femtocells with some way to offload some more traffic via WiFi.

Earlier this month Skype announced that its client would be able to work on most Symbian phones. I have used the Skype client on phones from '3' and they work great. Skype is even available on iPhones and they were downloaded 1 million times in the first couple of days. Now a big chunk of operator profits come from long distance calls and calls when abroad. If we all start using our phones with Skype, its going to bite into the operators profits. That means they will have to recover this profit from us by another way.

Skype on phones will be used in always on mode, meaning that the networks will get loaded and get congested. A simple solution is to have Femtocells at home that can offload the traffic on Internet. These background apps do cause a considerable amount of traffic and recently an Operator blamed the apps for its network woes.

Femtocells have been targeted generally at the residential market with developments going on for Business users as well. Another smaller Picocells and Microcells are also easily and cheaply available nowadays. With the Ad-Hoc deployment of all these smaller cells, Self Organising Networks (SON) may have a big role to play.

What happens where there are multiple networks present in the same place via these smaller cells? Can the back-haul not get congested because of these multiple networks which may be lying Idle most of the time? How would these impact other services that we use on our PC's?

These questions can be easily answered if a single Microcell/Picocell/Femtocell was able to work for Multiple Networks. Practically this may not be possible right now because each network has a different Authentication and Security arrangement.

At least we can start thinking and working on these problems while we still have time. When its too late, we may have to come up with workarounds. These workarounds only cause more headache in the longer term.

Picture Source

Sprint, Verizon and Mobile Healthcare

In US, Sprint and Verizon are going head to head with their 4G (sic.) offering. Sprint has a WiMAX network from its Clearwire joint venture while Verizon is soon to roll out LTE.

During the ongoing Healthcare Information and Management System Society or HIMSS annual conference being held in Atlanta, the CEO of Sprint Nextel, Dan Hesse mentioned that the 4G (sic.) technology will play an important part in helping to transform healthcare to a greater height.

With wireless technology being an essential part of everyday life for nearly 277 million Americans, it is changing the paradigm of how healthcare is administered. Internet savvy consumers today expect immediate access to health information and care anytime, anyplace. Last year, 89 percent of wireless Internet users sought health information online*. Similarly, caregivers are using smartphones equipped with medical applications for instant, secure access to lab results, x-rays, vital signs, drug-to-drug interactions, and other vital medical records. These trends further validate the key role that wireless will play in shaping the future of healthcare by enabling innovative and cost-effective approaches in delivering quality care.

“If I had to pick the one industry facing the biggest gap between need for change and use of wireless to facilitate that change, it would be healthcare,” Hesse said. Most industries spend between 6 percent and 8 percent of their revenues on telecom, but healthcare only spends 2 percent or 3 percent on it, he said. Darwin said that survival of the fittest is not about the strongest or the most intelligent — it’s about the most responsive to change, Hesse explained, and consumers are beginning to drive a lot of the change in healthcare. Healthcare spending on telecom will jump from $8.6 billion to $12.4 billion in the next few years, Hesse predicted, and two-thirds of that increase in spending will be from wireless apps and services.

What if we had asked the healthcare industry to partner with the wireless industry back in 1986, Hesse asked as he held up a massive mobile phone from that year. What if I said we could monitor patients and look at EKGs on one of these? The timing couldn’t be better for healthcare and wireless to work together, Hesse said as he took out a smartphone from his pocket. Today two-thirds of physicians use a smartphone like this one and soon more than 80 percent of them will.

What use cases does Hesse see for the wireless tools his industry offers?

> E-prescribing — Physicians’ bad hand writing causes some 4 percent of errors found in prescriptions. Hesse said a doctor friend of his realized the first time he saw a Palm PDA that it was the same size as his prescription pad and once it got Internet connectivity it would eventually eliminate the handwritten prescription. Hesse said e-Prescribing could save $20 billion annually.

> Instant, secure access to vital signs – Hesse pointed to AirStrip’s fetal heart rate monitor as a perfect example of vital sign remote monitoring that is in the market today.

> Advanced mobile apps for consumers – In just a few years we have gone from going online to look up home remedies for various ailments, Hesse said, to using apps like flu radar which can tell us how many cases of the flu have been diagnosed in our area. Hesse also pointed to the app currently being researched that encourages the end user to cough into the phone’s microphone so it can compare the sound to its database of coughs and come up with a preliminary diagnosis.

> Ultrasound probe that plugs right into a cell phone — Ultrasound exams could be conducted nearly anywhere and pipe the images to doctors that could also be nearly anywhere, Hesse predicted as he showed images of an ultrasound probe that connects to a cell phone. This will not only cut costs for ultrasounds, especially in developing market but also make it easier for EMTs and other healthcare workers who are away from hospitals to have a tool to use on the go.

> Wireless video monitors for virtual, in-home visits — While this one didn’t seem to leverage the real benefits of wireless, Hesse told a story of a nurse who had gained too much weight to be able to come into work anymore. After a short while of being detached from her former colleagues she became depressed over the situation and much less engaged in our own care. She then became part of a program that used wireless video monitors to enable two-way communications between patients in their home and physicians and nurses at care facilities. After receiving frequent virtual visits using the system, she took control of her health decisions, lost the weight and made it back to work.

> Virtual coaches on your handset — Hesse described another patient who had Type 2 diabetes, a regimen of oral medications and high blood pressure. In order to adhere to our routine she participated in a program with Sprint’s partner Welldoc to track her adherence. Welldoc offered her a virtual coach application that reminded and encouraged her to stay on track.

> Mobile enterprise for pandemic situations — During the H1N1 scare, Hesse said Sprint encouraged its workers to work from home or remotely to stem any potential spread of the flu virus among its ranks. Unlike businesses that have not adopted mobility tools for the enterprise, Sprint was able to restrict travel and encourage working from home without disrupting their employees’ workflow and progress. They had the mobile connectivity and devices to work from anywhere.

> mVisum for remote access to images, charts — Sprint partner mVisum enables clinicians to view charts, x-rays and other images right from their smartphones. Hesse said a cardiologist might be alerted through mVisum on his BlackBerry of an ambulance en route with a patient whom the paramedics suspected had suffered a heart attack. If the ambulance had wireless connectivity it could send that EKG to the cardiologist’s phone via mVisum and the clinician could prepare for the patient’s arrival knowing what needed to be done ahead of time. In those types of situations the time saved is extremely valuable.

> Intel Health Guide for remote visits and monitoring — Hesse said that moving more patients out of the hospital and back into their homes not only reduces costs overall by also improves opportunities. A woman with a high-risk pregnancy should not be moved in many cases, but she has to move in order to visit her doctor. Instead, hospitals could provide patients with Intel’s Health Guide, a tablet-like device with a touch screen that aims to make it easy for patients to track their vital signs and monitor their biometrics through peripheral devices. Physicians can make remote visits through the Health Guide.

> 4G wireless-enabled video cameras – Imagine video cameras with 4G wireless connectivity that can help patients learn how to apply their skin medication. A similar camera could be installed in an operating room to live broadcast surgeries in high definition. If it were installed in an ambulance, the EMTs could live broadcast stats, triage and more so that the clinicians at the care facility could prepare for their arrival.

> Intelligent medicine or pills with wireless embedded — “Soon i will be able to hold up a pill with wireless embedded into it,” Hesse said. The pill could also include a video camera and could send data and images straight to a doctor’s wireless device.

> 4G phones with Blu-Ray quality screens — Everyone always points to the cell phone screen’s small size or low resolution as reasons why images aren’t very useful on that platform. Hesse said HD, Blu-Ray quality resolution is coming to 4G phones.

“There are a lot of unsung heroes here today in this room,” Hesse said. “In the sometimes bitter debates on the subject of healthcare, too often we forget how important the job is of those people who deliver care.”

“To quote Yogi Berra, ‘The future ain’t what it used to be,’” Hesse said. With all the potential that Hesse pointed to and the fact that ten mobile phones are manufactured per every baby born today, the future is increasingly wireless. The future of HIMSS is wireless. And the industry can finally put the 1970s behind it.

More on the Sprint Mobile Healthcare solution at www.sprint.com/healthcare

Verizon Business has launched an information technology platform that enables the digital sharing of physician-dictated patient notes.

The Verizon Medical Data Exchange, launched Wednesday (March 3) at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference in Atlanta, provides a way for medical transcriptionists to share digitized patient notes detailing patients' care and treatment with doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Until now, the lack of an interoperable, nationally available platform has made it difficult to share these notes, which primarily form the basis of electronic health records.

Verizon Business developed the platform for the Medical Transcription Service Consortium under an agreement announced last November. Founding consortium members MD-IT and MedQuist currently are using the platform. By August, when the Medical Data Exchange is expected to be in use by all of the consortium's members, 350,000-plus physicians, more than 2,700 clinics and nearly 2,500 hospitals will be supported.

The Medical Transcription Industry Association estimates that its members create and electronically archive nearly 60 percent of the more than 1.2 billion clinical notes produced in the U.S. each year. Approximately 25 percent of these records currently are shared among health care providers, including other physicians, hospitals and insurance companies.

Verizon Wireless offers customers in the healthcare industry an extensive portfolio of products and services that run on the company's reliable Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Revision A (Rev. A) network, including:

PatientKeeper® – PatientKeeper's mobility products support all operations systems while connecting physicians to patient information across inpatient and ambulatory environments. With PatientKeeper, physicians save time, increase revenue and enhance patient care. PatientKeeper enables physicians to interactively manage patient information across multiple locations, view clinical results, enter charges, sign out patients, and enter and order prescriptions, all from their smartphones.

EPOCRATES Rx for Android and Palm OS – Doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who use Verizon Wireless smartphones with the Android™ OS, such as DROID by Motorola or DROID ERIS™ by HTC, or devices that run on the Palm® webOS™ platform, including Palm® Pre™ Plus and Palm Pixi™ Plus, can leverage this mobile drug reference application to get prescription and safety information for thousands of brand name and generic drugs instantly. The application also offers Pill ID, which helps identify a drug based on physical characteristics such as color, shape and imprint code; table and calculators; and drug interaction information.

Medicine Central and Evidence Central – Unbound Medicine offers two applications for Verizon Wireless Android, BlackBerry®, Palm and Windows Mobile® devices.

Medicine Central is a collection of disease, drug and test information with literature tracking for mobile devices. The application features The 5-Minute Clinical Consult, A to Z Drug Facts, Drug Interaction Facts, Pocket Guide to Diagnostic Tests, and MEDLINE Journals.

Evidence Central supports effective evidence-based medical practice by integrating analysis with the latest research. Clinicians can access Evidence-Based Medicine Guidelines, Cochrane Abstracts, EE+ POEMs (Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters from Essential Evidence Plus), and MEDLINE Journals anytime, anywhere.

Motion Computing® C5 Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) – Running on Windows® 7, the C5 is a hospital-grade device proven to enhance clinician satisfaction, improve point of care documentation, increase clinician productivity, and improve clinical documentation accuracy. The MCA is now available with embedded Verizon Wireless Mobile Broadband capability to stay connected to hospital information and the Internet.

More on Verizon Mobile Healthcare Solution at www.verizonwireless.com/healthcare

New Mobiles at Mobile World Congress 2010

New Technologies for Mobile Phone Theft prevention

Design Out Crime: Mobile Phone solutions from Design Council on Vimeo.

Three prototype solutions for preventing mobile phone theft have been unveiled.

The i-migo, the 'tie' solution and TouchSafe have been developed to counter crimes such as mobile phone identity fraud, which rose by over 70 per cent in 2009.

TouchSafe uses Near Field Communications (NFC) technology similar to that used by the Oyster Card and requires the handset's owner to carry a small card with them that they touch on the phone every time they make a purchase.

The 'tie' solution makes an association between a handset and theSIM chip so that other SIMs cannot be used on the handset should the mobile phone be stolen.

And the i-migo is a small device carried by the mobile phone's owner that sounds an alert and locks the handset should it be taken outside of a set range. Additionally, it automates the back-up of any data stored on the device.

The prototypes were inspired by a Home Office initiative to develop new ways of preventing mobile phone theft and will be shown off atMobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Home Office Minister Alan Campbell said: "As new technology creates new opportunities for the user it can also provide criminals with opportunities as well.

"I believe the solutions developed by this challenge have the potential to be as successful as previous innovations like Chip and Pin, which reduced fraud on lost or stolen cards to an all-time low, and would encourage industry to continue working with us and take them up," Campbell continued.

Google real time speech translation mobile in couple of years

Live language translation on mobile phones could be just two years away, according to search giant Google. The company already offers text translation services and voice recognition, and Franz Och, head of translation services, says that work has already begun on combining the two.

The technology would work by translating phrases rather than individual words, and the company hopes that by looking at the huge amount of translated text already online, it can produce systems that are much more accurate than current versions. “If you look at the progress in machine translation and corresponding advances in voice recognition, there has been huge progress recently,” he said.

With over 6,000 languages spoken around the world, however, and only 52 currently on offer through Google’s existing translations services, the service is some way from meaning that language teaching in schools becomes redundant. “Clearly, for it to work smoothly, you need a combination of high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on,” said Mr Och.

So far, that is not yet possible, and language experts suggested that seamless technology is currently a distant prospect. David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University, said the problems of dealing with speed of speech and range of accents could prove insurmountable.

'No system at the moment can handle that properly,' he added.

LTE Demos at CES 2010 from Alcatel Lucent

Top 10 paid iPhone apps

Interesting collection of paid iPhone Apps from The Independent.

1. Doodle Jump: £0.59 Jumping game featuring different platforms and obstacles to overcome.

See here for details. Official website here.

2. Where's Wally (Where's Waldo in USA). £1.79 The striped-jumper sporting explorer leaves the page and enters the iPhone in this hidden-object game.

More details here. Official website here.

3. MOTO X MAYHEM £0.59 Jump, lean and race through 14 levels of motocross action in this side-scroller.

More details here. Official website here.

4. CRASH BANDICOOT £1.79 High-octane 3D kart racing.

More details here. Official website here.

5. BEJEWELED 2 £1.79 The simple but compelling gem-swapping action puzzle.

More details here. Official website here.

6. WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? £2.99 Although you can't win the ultimate cash prize, this game lets you experience the 'Millionaire' quiz questions.

More details here. Official website here.

7. THE SIMPSONS ARCADE £2.99 Help Homer round up the delicious doughnuts that are located around Springfield.

More details here.

8. TETRIS £1.79 The block-dropping classic.

More details here. Official website here.

9. NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT £3.99 With 20 supercars and 18 tricky tracks to master, this title, currently reduced, is a winner.

More details here.

10. IVIDEO CAMERA £0.59 No 3GS? No worries with this video camera app.

More details here.

Morgan Stanley's 'The Mobile Internet Report'

A bit old but may be interesting for people who are interested in Stats. Back in Dec. Morgan Stanley released a report titled 'The Mobile Internet Report' which is probably one of the biggest collection of mobile Stats.

According to Tomi Ahonen:

The report while they call it a 'mobile internet' report - is in fact, a report on smartphone based use of browser data services. It is very US centric, but is global, and it is far too obsessed about the iPhone. And it disappoints me, that while the report writers are very aware of simpler technologies, even when they discuss the Emerging World, they obsess about 3G, which will not be a meaningful part of the internet experience in places like Africa for most of the next decade..

But it does discuss SMS to some degree, and briefly mentions MMS and 'non 3G' internet such as in China (ie WAP). It is also very good making analysis of Japan's mobile internet (including i-Mode before 3G). Totally worth downloading and reading.

Now a few key highlights. The total mobile data industry for 2009 worth... 284 Billion dollars. Wow. Morgan Stanley says it grew 20% this year (while the global economy shrunk 5%). For those who were looking for regional splits of phone market shares or smartphone market shares - this report has them. It says that the modern smartphone is equivalent to a desktop PC 8 years ago in performance. Haha, fave topic of mine - they also say that for internet content consumption - the mobile is 'better' in at least four areas (but not in every case). These 4 are email, VoIP, news and social networking. And they tell us that the value of paid digital content on mobile phones is 4x as big as the value of paid digital content on the PC internet.

And yes, hundreds of more data points, stats and tons of good graphs to help explain. Totally worth downloading, reading and quoting. Enjoy

You can download the report from here.

Interesting Presentation on Mobile Social Networking in Japan

Japan Mobile SNS Study 2010

View more presentations from yaromir.

If you have any comments or questions, leave it at the authors blog here.

59p iPhone stethoscope is a life saviour

From The Independent, UK:

The stethoscope, the 200-year-old accessory without which no doctor is complete, could soon be replaced by the humdrum mobile phone.

A computer scientist who wrote a program that turns an Apple iPhone into a stethoscope has made a major advance in medical technology and created a sensation among heart specialists. The application, called iStethoscope, was developed as a "bit of fun", and has become a runaway success after being downloaded millions of times by users across the world.

Cardiologists say the software has saved lives and brought specialist expertise within reach of patients in remote parts of the world. Heart sounds can be recorded and emailed to doctors anywhere for an expert opinion.

Peter Bentley, a researcher who developed the application in the computer science department at University College, London, said he was amazed by the response.

"The idea began as an experiment," he added. "I had a new, popular science book out last year and I wanted to see if I could tell people about the book using a free iPhone application that did something useful.

"It was intended as a fun toy but to my astonishment it was downloaded by several million people all over the world in the first six months. Then I started receiving emails, phone calls and visits from cardiologists all over the world. They said it worked better than commercially available digital stethoscopes. They were tremendously excited. One flew over from the US just to discuss it with me."

The cause of the doctors' excitement was that the audio quality from the iPhone was far superior to that from digital stethoscopes. Mobile phones are a huge market compared with digital stethoscopes, and economies of scale mean they are made with better hardware.

Responding to requests from specialists, Mr Bentley extended the application to allow heart sounds to be recorded, emailed and analysed. The application costs 59p to download, but cardiologists say it does a better job than equipment costing thousands of times as much.

Glenn Nordehn, a US cardiologist researcher and specialist in digital stechoscopes at the University of Minnesota, said: "This is the best thing to come around in terms of medical equipment for a very long time. [His] closest competitor charges about 3,000 times as much"

Mr Bentley is now working on further iPhone applications, such as an electrocardiogram reader. "This is the way everyone wants to go," he said.

For more info see: http://www.peterjbentley.com/istethoscope.html

SQUARE: From the founder of Twitter

From CNN:

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey Wednesday gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture -- a device to allow credit card payments by cell phone -- and revealed it would be given away for free.

Details of "Square" -- a card reader which plugs into the headphone socket of most mobile devices -- have been circulating on the Internet since it was announced earlier this month, but little has been known about how it works or who it was aimed at.

However, Dorsey -- whose microblogging Web site has proved hugely popular but not hugely profitable since launching in March 2006 -- gave no explanation on how he would make money from his new creation, beyond revealing there would be a per-transaction charity donation.

Square, a tiny cube about an inch in length, contains a magnetic strip reader that allows users to swipe and read credit cards, then deduct payment on or offline through a downloaded application that communicates with card issuers in the same way as retailer devices.

Customers then use their finger on the phone's touch-recognition screen to sign their name to the transaction.

Dorsey, Twitter's co-founder and chairman, says the device, scheduled for launch on iPhones and iPods in March 2010, was inspired partly by the "immediacy, approachability and transparency" of Twitter and by the global economic crisis which has exposed a need for a radical rethink of the financial sector.

Location Based Systems/Services Presentations

Interesting presentations from Cambridge Wireless on LBS:

"How do we Make Location a Desirable User Experience?"

Click on the titles below to view the provocateurs' presentations and the notes from the three group discussions -

Introduction from Colin Smithers of Plextek

Group 1: Technology - Presentation by Adrian Swinburne of Quintaxiom + Faciliator's Notes

Group 2: Context - Presentation by Kurt Lyall of Xgenta + Faciliator's Notes

Group 3: Privacy - Facilitator's Notes

How to build more powerful mobile web

Interesting presentation from Google here.

Bangladesh: Learn English on your Mobile

More than 300,000 people in Bangladesh, one of Asia’s poorest but fastest-growing economies, have rushed to sign up to learn English over their mobile phones, threatening to swamp the service even before its official launch on Friday.

The project, which costs users less than the price of a cup of tea for each three-minute lesson, is being run by the BBC World Service Trust, the international charity arm of the broadcaster. Part of a UK government initiative to help develop English skills in Bangladesh, it marks the first time that mobile phones have been used as an educational tool on this scale.

Since mobile-phone services began in Bangladesh just over a decade ago, more than 50.4m Bangladeshis have acquired phone connections, including many in remote rural areas. This far outnumbers the 4m who have internet access.

English is increasingly seen as a key to economic mobility. An estimated 6.2m Bangladeshis work overseas and hundreds of thousands of others want to follow in their steps. However, English is also important for securing jobs at home, where about 71 per cent of employers look for workers with “communicative English”.

Through its Janala service, the BBC offers 250 audio and SMS lessons at different levels. Each lesson is a three-minute phone call, costing about 3 taka (2.6p).

One basic lesson involves listening to and repeating simple dialogue like: “What do you do?” “I work in IT, what about you?” “I’m a student.” “That’s nice.” Another is devoted to differentiating vowel sounds like those in ship and sheep or leaf and live.

All six mobile phone operators in Bangladesh have agreed to cut the cost of calls to the service by 50 per cent to make it more affordable. Ms Chamberlain said the project team was in talks with the mobile phone companies to increase capacity to cope with the unexpectedly high demand.

The launch of the service comes just weeks after Grameenphone, the country’s largest mobile phone operator, held Bangladesh’s largest IPO, raising $71m from retail investors in the largest offering ever held in the country.

The language lessons are mainly targeting 18 to 24-year-olds, who typically had five or more years of formal education, but whose training in English had been weak. The target market is people living on less than 10,000 taka ($145, €97, £87) a month, who would struggle to pay for formal English lessons.

The relatively low cost of mobile handsets and connection charges has led to an explosion in their use and an estimated 50 million people now have access to phones.

Now users will be able to listen via their phones to weekly bilingual ­English language lessons and receive lessons by text as part of a low-cost service. Lessons are available at four levels, ranging from basic conver­sation skills, to support with sounds that Bangladeshis find difficult to pronounce, and the higher-level vocabulary of English language news media.

New lessons will be available each week with older lessons accessible from an archive. Learners can also ­assess their skills by doing audio quizzes and tests delivered by text message.

The trust says that it has negotiated reductions on standard mobile tariffs of up to 75% to make the service affordable to users with limited incomes.

Allan Freedman, country director for BBC World Service Trust Bangladesh, said: “Young people across Bangladesh have told us they consider learning English as a path to better jobs and opportunities. Our project is about meeting that demand and helping millions of people access English learning tools for the first time.

“It’s arguably the most exciting use of English to improve the lives of ­people in the developing world today.”

The Janala lessons will also be available via the internet on a ­website designed to develop both English-­language and web-user skills, in a country where computer use has been severely restricted by high costs and lack of electricity in rural areas.

Janala will also be promoted via a weekly television programme, BBC Buzz, produced by the World Service Trust, which started broadcasting last month. The show features stories aimed at younger viewers and covers topics such as careers, politics, fashion and music.

It includes the English language learning exploits of a cartoon character called Rinku. Viewers can receive follow-up lessons via mobile phone that build on language points raised by Rinku and have a say on future ­episodes.