Cubic Telecom offers a programmable SIM card. That SIM can be configured with different mobile numbers based on your location. If I go to UK I could use an UK number. If I stay in Romania I should use a romanian number. Also their SIM is able to detect the WIFI networks and automatically switch to the WIFI network for VOIP calls. This company is lowering the cost of the calls.

Yap is a company which provides speech to text and text to speech services on mobile phones. It seems that they support only the english language for the moment. They allow you to send / receive text messages and emails without using the keyboard.

Cognitive Code (the link points to a presentation of the company) offers SILVIA (Symbolically Isolated, Linguistically Variable, IntelligenceAlgorithms) platform which is a complete system for the development and deployment of intelligent applications to almost any platform, with a technological core that allows humans to interact with computers in completely natural and intuitive ways. The platform helps derive context and meaning from user inputs, via speech, text, or other methods, so you can communicate with the platform as if it were another person. This is their marketing talk

For the normal persons around: is a product which implements the concept Do What I Mean on any platform, including mobile phones. It has some basic AI stuff inside and as I see it now it seems it works.

I can only hope that the rumored Gphone when it will appear will have Yap and SILVIA on it or maybe will support it in a future software update.

• The new Ipods are all OSX based as it seems, but I will focus only on the Ipod Touch and the Iphone. These 2 devices have one of the biggest and best screens in the realm of mobile devices.
• I remember, I think 5 years ago when Apple introduced OSX 10, they were bragging about PDF native support in the operating system.
• There isn’t a good pdf renderer for mobile devices (ebook readers) yet.
• Most of the ebooks are in pdf format.
• Apple announced a partnership with Starbucks.
• There is a Starbucks shop in every Barnes & Noble book store.
• Steve managed to negotiate with movie studios and music companies to put their products in the Itunes store. Somehow I think is going to be easier to negotiate with the book companies.
• The Itunes store can be easily extended to support PDFs with DRM (so Steve and the industry would be happy). But I would really like to see support for PDFs without DRM on the Ipods also
• Apple can go after Amazon’s books business
• Both devices supports software updates very nicely.
• You do not need a computer anymore to buy from Itunes.

I think everything is in place for a new line of business for Apple. I wonder if the numbers are good enough for them to create a new ecosystem and to do for the books what they did for the music.

And if you guys really do this, please make sure that multitasking is working. I would really like to listen to music while I am reading my favorite book.

From a small business point of view, the are some issues that are stopping a wider spread adoption of these apps:

• lack of offline access
• lack of privacy
• too little or too many features
• missing single sign on
• common interface

If you take a look at all these applications you will see that all these sites offer a limited free version, and then a feature complete paying version. After I looked at all these sites I noticed that most of them are asking anywhere between 2 to 4 $ per user per month for the services that they are offering.

Assuming Firefox 3 will help alleviate the issue of off line access I am sure there is a big opportunity for a company to offer all these services under a single sign on and a common interface with a pricing scheme like this:

• no matter what you are using your encrypted remote hard drive the storage should cost you around 0.5$ per GB per user per month.
• basic services which will be used by individuals and companies like Email, Contacts, Instant Messaging, Calendar, Tasks, Information Organizer (something like Google notebook and docs), Photos, should cost you 1$ per service per user per month.
• advanced services like Project Management, Document Management, Clients management, Sales Funnel should cost you 2$ per service per user per month.
• the client should be able to buy credit in 10-20$ increments and then should be able to use the credit however he wants it, enabling and disabling services, increasing and decreasing the storage space according to his needs.

You could have let’s say Email, Calendar and Instant Messaging with 4 GB storage space for 5$ per month without the lack of privacy or adverts in or around your email. I know I would pay these amounts for this kind of services if I would be sure my data is private and encrypted at all times.

Waiting for your comments

Is clear that Google wants you on the web (on Google’s internet) and is doing everything it can to achieve that. Also is clear that there are 2 big issues with you trusting everything you have (metaphoric speaking for the time being ) to Google:

• What are you going to do when you do not have access to the internet? Probably you won’t have any solution until 3rd quarter this year when Firefox 3 is going to be available providing support for off line apps. Probably around the launch time for Firefox 3, Google is going to release a small Linux (Free BSD) based operating system which will launch Firefox with tabs for all the services Google will provide at that stage. I dare to say that most probably they will provide access to their services using other devices (maybe Apple’s Iphone ). So far these are just educated guesses but it feels like every piece of the puzzle is going to be at the right place and the right time.
• What are you going to do about privacy. I have very awkward feelings about Google lately. I like so much what they are doing, but I so don’t like the fact that all my data is belonging to them.

I think I have a possible alternative solution to what Google has to offer. To me is clear that probably less than 20% actually are using the collaboration option provided by different providers of the web apps. Most of the users, are using the web apps in “a standalone mode”. Also all the users need to download an web browser (OK. that app is most of the time bundled with the operating system) for them to be able to access the applications.

What if somebody will start developing a standard application maybe based on Firefox or Thunderbird which should provide: mail through IMAP, calendar through Ical, Chat based on Jabber, basic word and excel like capabilities (no more than what Google is offering now), and an authentication system based on openid.

You get freed from Google, but you need to have access to providers of IMAP, Ical, offsite storage (maybe something based on Amazon S3).
You get offline applications.
Your data will belong to you.
You will still be able to access your data from any device which is able to run that standard application.

All 3 were planning to launch many satellites (Iridium 77, Globalstar 48 and Teledesic initially 840 and then 288) into low earth orbit.
All 3 failed more or less. Teledesic did not launched anything, Globalstar is closing down operations slowly but surely, Iridium is still operational, but mostly serving the US government.

Is interesting to note that except the communications satellites which are in geostationary orbit around the earth, the only group of satellites which are doing some public service is in medium earth orbit (GPS satellites). Probably there are the Keyhole satellites and other spies in the sky in low earth orbit but they are off limit for the general public.

Why the constellations failed?

There are technical reasons, business reasons and l assume unknown reasons . Below in no particular order some considerations.

• They weren’t able to deploy the satellites fast enough and the ground based communication technologies eliminated the need up to a point.
• The GSM networks allowed roaming.
• Cost per minute too high due to operational costs which were high
• Lack of viable and cheap launch vehicles.
• In some aspects they were ahead of time. The mobile phones did not reached at that time the critical mass.
• They were providing mobile phone access to remote locations on earth, but is important to ask, how many possible clients would you have in that remote location?
• The phones were bulky, heavy and difficult to take it with you.
• Sometime I wonder if these companies weren’t help to fail by some obscure forces. Because if they would have succeed, the standard communication companies would have lost customers, the access to information all over the globe would have been a little easier (not cheaper).

GPS success story

On the other hand the GPS constellation is alive and kicking. This is due to the fact that the US military is the main beneficiary of the system, but the important part for the scope of the discussion, is the acceptance of the services by almost everybody in the world. Because it allows you to things that you wouldn’t be able to do without the GPS; from navigation for aircrafts, cars, ships to help locating a person in distress. Also should be noted that is the same GPS which guides the missiles, military aircrafts and ships and so on. And actually with much better precision than the general public is allowed.
Now Galileo project is taking shape trying to get a piece of the market owned by the GPS, and also trying to make the EU a little more independent. Is basically the same concept like the American GPS but owned by private European industry instead of the American military.

Final ingredients to the story

• Stratellites is a project, is a buzz word, it’s a lot of hype around it in the specialized blogs, but if you go around the hype maybe there is something here.
• Wimax is a lot more known. I really hope it won’t have the same “success” like the ATM which was supposed to replace all protocols before year 2000
• VOIP which is one step towards service convergence.
• Lossy codecs for audio and video as in ogg, mp3, aac+, xvid, divx, H264 you pick one or more.

Let’s start dreaming

What do I want from a service like the one envisioned 10 years ago?

• I wish to be able to call anyone and be called for a very reasonable price per minute.
• I wish to be able to use that device as a “modem” for my laptop (maybe the 100$ laptop but this is another dream).
• I wish to have enough download and upload speed for a video conference (no HDTV quality needed, VGA will do just fine)
• I wish to be able to be located if needed by using the GPS, GALILEO constellations.

And that’s pretty much it.

Now, assuming that the strattelites are working as promised, the VOIP and WIMAX devices are working perfectly without any servicing needed what would be the strategy to implement a service like this.

Ideally you could get all the big gsm telcos at one table: the European ones (Vodafone, Orange), the Japanese NTT, the US TMobile and Verizon and so on and they should put their financing power behind a project like this.
I wonder how many calls are placed simultaneously in a 6 millions subscribers network. 100000? 200000? 1000000? Do not know. But according with the guys with the stratellites, one airship will cover a lot of space (average european country). Is it possible to have a “PABX” inside an airship like this which should deal with the average number of calls using VOIP and Wimax? Anyway I do not have the necessary data or experience to make the right assumptions here, but I am allowed to dream.
I am sure that if the project is possible the operating costs for an airship like this would be cheaper than the cost of maintaining the ground network for any GSM or CDMA operator. And the end I would have only a VOIP phone which I can use with Skype or Vonage at home and then if I am on top of the mountain I can still use it

I am waiting for your 2 cents, to help me improve the dream.