Why VoLTE (Voice over LTE) might take really long

There was an interesting article today at the Reg explaining VoLTE (Voice over LTE – Long Term Evolution or 4G LTE) in their WTF series of articles. I’ve been following this interesting phenomenon that over the last few months many telecom operators are rolling-out 4G networks, but not fully utilising the features that 4G networks bring for Voice-Over-IP (VOIP).

So to give a bit of background on LTE and its advantages that I’m talking about. LTE being a purely IP network has the advantages of managing just one kind of data packet. This means that we can build tools around only managing IP and data packets. So all your gateways and routers could be optimized to lessons that have been learnt from using internet firewalls, messaging routers and what have you… Voice is also sent as data packets instead of having a different frequency for voice. GSMA puts some advantages to VoLTE:

1. Single implementation promotes scale
2. Single implementation reduces complexity
3. Single implementation enables Roaming

But as you’ll see, its not as simple to move an existing infrastructure to another one. We’ve seen this in the case of IPv6 as well. Information Infrastructure  theory discusses in length the challenges of evolving/moving infrastructures. They don’t happen overnight, nor is there an obvious/expected path to how it’ll evolve! A couple of months back we heard Verizon’s deployment of 4G LTE, “there’s no rush for VoLTE”. If not using VoLTE, one can re-route the voice calls to the old-style Circuit-Switched (CS) network. But this handover between the network creates a lag of 3-4 secs, and my guess is that on heavy traffic could take longer. Investing in this handover might be another headache for the telecom operator, but that seems to be the path most of the operators are taking. The Reg article asks an important question “Are phone users - most of the population these days, though rather fewer of them will be 4G early adopters - going to put up with the pre-call lag? Will they accept a lesser experience than they're used to?”. An important question and the answer could be that operators will use 4G for data services and 3G connection for voice. So they’ll not move to 4G completely and still have their 3G equipment.

There is path dependency that the operators will take and this will result in much slower adoption of VoLTE. So while the operators think it might be fine to make the users wait a few seconds to get on the call, I don’t think users will appreciate that… I hate listening to some stupid beeps or never connecting the call on CDMA networks in India when making an urgent call!! We want 4G for the data speeds, but we decrease usability through the route which operators are taking. Why not get into VoIP apps through which calls can be made? Monetize that instead? Forget the fear that you’ll lose money from voice calls. Increasing volumes on data services will help. As an operator, you can always bundle cheap calls when using that VoIP app that you install as part of the SIM card.

Gigabit Wireless Router from Cisco

Today while I was browsing through the Cisco website, found out that they’ve started taking pre-orders for Gigabit Wireless router based on the 802.11ac draft spec. The model is Linksys EA6500 scheduled to release in August 2012. This means that speeds upto a Gb/s is achievable using off-the-shelf consumer routers already. They are listing “Ultimate Speeds upto 450 + 1300Mbps*”. Seriously wow!! Dual Band, so you get the 450Mbps from the n-spec and 1300Mbps from draft-ac spec.

Now, most of you would wonder why the hell do we need that much speed… I was recently trying to stream my favorite BD-Rip Avataar 3D through the XBox 360 on to my TV. But alas, I had to transcode to lower quality because my wireless-n router at 300Mbps was not good enough . So, we definitely need this soon as more and more content is available in full HD and we want to start streaming and communicating between the different devices in our household.

Another interesting thing, is that router has built-in NFC (Near Field Communication), which can use a phone (which has NFC) for transmitting configuration. But this feature sounds like just using a technology for the heck of it. How hard is it to type a passphrase or open the router page on the browser and configure. Nevertheless, some nice technologies packed into one experimental device. And then there is also an Acer router with similar 5th gen Wifi stuff…

iPad 2 : Something about Apple just fascinates people

Why do people get fascinated with Apple products? I’ve always wondered… Is it really that Apple products are so much better than what’s available in the market? They had the iPod, the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad (…to name some) and gave them cult status. Now with the iPad 2, I see the same fascination in people in response to the launch and the ads.

The iPad 2 really isn’t the best in terms of hardware packed into the device. Motorola Xoom/Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the camera on both front and back better than the iPad 2. Battery life and processors are equally competitive. The ecology around Android is really awesome and growing rapidly. The iPad 2 is thinner, but wasn’t the iPad already thin?? The iPad 2 doesn’t have USB. It does not run flash. It will use proprietary formats for connecting to other devices. It does not have an SD card reader. So why are people still fascinated with the Apple iPad 2?

One thing is how Apple sells you the stuff... The ads make an emotional connection with you. The people who tell you things in the Apple ads, just like Steve Jobs speaks at the launch of these devices, make you feel fascinated. The “cool-ness” of Apple devices are another fascination. The external design and look-and-feel of Apple products are these days probably similar to other high-end devices, but the overall experience of the Apple software in my opinion is the biggest difference. How many times on the iOS have you seen a “Force Close” dialog, that an Android device would often throw? How many times do you feel an interface element to be out of place, when using an Android device?

I write this as I’ve just finished playing with a friend’s Motorola Xoom while at the library. I’ve tried the Galaxy tab, the iPad, but none of them are “Post PC” as Jobs describes it at the moment. Somebody nicely said, its an Apple vs Oranges comparison. You choose the fruit you like… I don’t like both yet!!

The Mirage of Mobile Number Portability

Just like a thirsty traveller in a desert follows the mirage thinking that its water, Indian mobile subscribers have been waiting for mobile number portability for long. Little do they know that when mobile portability actually arrives, it’ll only be a mirage of what they hope for!! Mobile Number Portability is the ability for a subscriber to carry their mobile phone numbers and switch operators. Thus, by just paying a small fees of Rs. 19/- you would be able to change your mobile operator and still keep your same phone number.

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) exists in a lot of countries. Basically in most of these places, mobile numbers are considered as assets or belongings of an individual, similar to your house address. In India, it is being advertised by operators as an opportunity for customers to move to a ‘better’ operator, when you are dissatisfied with your current operator… and this is exactly why I say it’s a mirage!

Every operator has some number of customers who don’t like their service. From most people I have talked to, every operator has this group of dissatisfied customers. But since anyone who was dissatisfied would previously just change their phone numbers, it wasn’t a big deal for these customers… They are so fed up with the operators that they have already moved to the next operator. On the other hand, people who cannot change their phone numbers because the phone number is really important for them, generally adjust with the operator and the ecosystem balances itself naturally like any mature market does. What Mobile Number Portability is not doing is changing the infrastructure or the technology deployed by the operators. It does not change the policies, tariffs or customer service of the mobile operator. For a sector which is somewhat saturated in a lot of circles, it really is not much of a change agent.

If the reports from the pilot in Haryana is anything to go about, there really hasn’t been a large change in the customer base and market shares of the mobile operators. Other than Idea, most operators have not advertised a lot about MNP. Most operators are following a wait and watch policy and not many want to be first-movers in grabbing customers from others. Its been over a month for MNP in Haryana and that should have been enough to see the change factors because of MNP. But the lack lustre effects of MNP have shown that it is something that the market and the customers are not enthusiastic about. May be in other circles the market might be more dynamic, but we’ll only know when the nation-wide launch happens on 20th Jan, 2011. It will be interesting days to see how the different telecom circles work their way in the post-MNP era.

I think of the mobile operators today like politicians. Everyone is dissatisfied with politicians. There is always something to complain about them. Still you expect everyone should be voting and democracy should run smoothly.

Apple’s Magic Mouse and now Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

Apple was the company that made the GUI and the use of the mouse popular back in the old days. But ever since, Apple hasn’t been the best designers of the mouse and Apple has been often been criticized for not being able to make ergonomic pointing devices. Apple has tried numerous times to redefine the mouse with different shapes, design, button positions over the years, but the simple two/three button with scroll mouse has nearly been the market favorite including those who swear by Apple devices.

Last year Apple came out with what was another attempt to redesign the mouse. They called it the Magic Mouse. It was a failure at ergonomics and not many people loved it. Today at CES 2011, Microsoft Research presented what it hopes to be Mouse 2.0. It is a mouse without buttons, similar to a laptop trackpad. It does not have scroll or buttons and works based on the touch of the fingers. Thus you can swipe your fingers, perform pinch and zoom gestures etc. on the mouse surface. "One finger lets people manage individual documents or pages by flicking to quickly scroll, pan and tilt, and one thumb lets people move back or forward through a Web browser. Two fingers manage windows, letting people maximise, minimise, snap and restore them. Three fingers let people navigate their whole desktop, showing instant viewer or clearing their desktop."

Apple’s Mighty Mouse	Microsoft’s Touch Mouse

I am of the opinion that both the mice do not have what it takes to be called a revolution. There is already an installed base of users who are used to the two buttons and scroll and will not see any real benefit to move to these new gadgets. These do not have special features that are extremely important to computer users. If you have a laptop, you already have the trackpad do it for you.

Cheapest 5 Android Phones

While some including me believe that the top-end of mobile phones will live forever and the platforms of the top-end won’t come to the low-end, there are others who believe that open platforms like Android (or the many earlier Linux consortiums – CELF, OSDL) truly provides platform that can work on the high-end and low-end equally well.

But as we’ve quickly seen, instead of the hardware manufacturers, the software industry really has driven what hardware sells. We saw that for the PC market and are quickly seeing that in the mobile phone markets now. How the OS and the applications are making or breaking the success of the mobile phone handsets. Nevertheless, here are the cheapest Android phones in the Indian market, which may probably be global leading in terms of mobile phone growth in the low-end market… And the prices will keep dropping I guess!!

1. Huawei IDEOS U8300 – Rs. 6200/-

Huawei has many handsets in India in the CDMA market. Most of these handsets are serviced by operators that provide these mobile phones along with the plan. The IDEOS is manufactured in China and is sold in many markets around the world. I happened to see this phone is also available in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia.

This entry-level smartphone was designed with the needs of young, mobile users in mind. This smartphone combines a QWERTY keyboard and a touch-screen in a small, chocolate-bar inspired package. Powered by Android 2.1, it comes with the most popular social networking applications pre-installed, so users can stay in touch anytime, anywhere.

For more information, please visit: www.huaweidevice.com/ideos

The phone has low battery life, but provides excellent features for the price.

2. Acer beTouch E110 – Rs. 6990/-

• Stylish, compact and slim design
• 2.8” (QVGA) resistive screen
• 5-way navi key
• 3G and Bluetooth connectivity

Looks pretty and is light-weight. Doesn’t have very good battery life, but does have some good applications and interfaces built-in like Spinlets and Nemo Player

 

3. Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro – Rs. 8700/-

- 240 x 320 pixels (QVGA)
- 2,6" capacitive touchscreen

- GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900
- UMTS/HSPA 900/2100

- 5MP Camera with Flash
- WiFi

Great build quality and excellent software and hardware polish. Great support and service centers. Known brand

4. Samsung I5503 Galaxy 5 – Rs. 8800/-

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 3.6 Mbps HSDPA support
• Smart dialing
• 2.8 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen
• Android OS v2.1 Eclair
• TouchWiz 3.0 UI customization (on both, I5801 has Orange UI too)
• 600 MHz processor
• 2MP camera with geo-tagging
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n support

 

5. Spice Mi300 – Rs. 9400/-

Android 2.1 Ready
Android Market Place
Google Messaging Services with Push Mail
AGPS

Key features

• 3.5G
• Wi- Fi
• 3.2” HVGA Capacitive Touch Screen
• 5 MP Camera

Bulk SMS Ban for Ayodhya Case

In another weird act by the Indian government (after recent attempts to get ransom from Blackberry), there has been a ban on bulk SMS for a total of 72 hours. The ban has been imposed through a directive to all the mobile operators that all corporate SMS messaging service need to be blocked. The explanation to this directive is a precautionary measure to prevent SMS as a medium of communication to spread communal disharmony following the Ayodhya Case hearing on Friday.

The Ayodhya-Babri Masjid demolition case has been on for the last 17 years and people have fears that whatever the verdict, since one of the religious groups will be at loss in their agenda, there is expected communal disharmony. I personally do not believe that religious sentiments are strong enough after so many years and politics has gone beyond religious/caste topics to more development-oriented topics these days… But you never know what these politicians pay for

Is SMS the only way to mass spread messages?? If the Indian government believes that SMS is the only way to spread mass messages, then they have probably not understood modern day technology. With internet and messengers, there are lot more ways to fast communication. Such directives only cause headache to people… like banking website that rely on SMS for transactions or SMS voting systems have failed to work in the last couple of days

Google Vs Bing, Squared Vs WolframAlpha. Google’s Got Competition

All of a sudden, Google has got competition that it never has had to face before. Microsoft’s new search “Bing” was launched last month with some fanfare and why not?? It is probably Google biggest search competition till date. If that was not all, today Google released somewhat of a second thought to Wolfram Alpha called Google Squared.

If you have never heard of these new products, hold your horses. You can read about these below and then play with them.

Google Vs Bing

Microsoft has always been on the loosing end of the battle on the web. Be it search or online advertising, Google has ruled the roost. With no competition on the horizon and Google incrementally improving search and ads, I was thinking Google was unbeatable. But Microsoft has other plans. A revamp of the Live search and a new name “Bing”, Microsoft’s search engine does for the first time give some serious competition to Google. Its been over a week now and I have been ‘binging’ (as googling) on Bing as my default search engine and I seem to quite like it. Its easily better than what Live Search was and as accurate as Google, if not better. And Bing’s not just plain-old search. Microsoft has presented Bing as a nice little query engine. Like Flight Search, Shopping Decisions, Fitness, Traffic and much more as you can see from “The Demo Tour” of Bing. Even Apple’s co-Founder Steve Wozniak, who is generally skeptical of Microsoft feels great about Bing!!

  

Now Google’s homepage is really simple, whereas Bing shows a nice little “wallpaper” as the background with some random interesting knowledge hidden in the wallpaper. And that Bing Wallpaper changes everyday with some new knowledge and interesting facts. Go try and find out for yourself!!

Google Squared Vs Wolfram Alpha

While the world is in love with Wikipedia and clicking on all those links in Google search results for finding relevant information about a topic, WolframAlpha is released as a semantic search to gather all that information and show you most common information on a single page. Now as simply as WolframAlpha presents the information, its a real tough computational problem to solve. Google has released Google Squared as an attempt to do a semantic search and present relevant information in a similar fashion. The output of the results do wary greatly and for me WolframAlpha has nearly every time been more relevant. As an example, I searched “India” as the keyword and WolframAlpha presented a real encyclopedia style information with the maps and the stats. Google Squared on the other hand was too generic (like Google Search) and expected me to do more reading/searching on each of the squares (as you can see from the screenshots below):

 

Then while a friend of mine and I were discussing about Nazi Germany and SS, I decided to do a search with “Schutzstaffel” as my keyword and below are the results:

 

I would surely say Google’s got some serious competition. Google’s Web is going to change after all!!

The Mobile Phone Tool for Indian HMIS

As you have already found out, I haven’t been blogging lately because of the travel and development work I have been doing for HISP India. One of the new developments that I have been working over the last 3 months is a mobile phone application for routine health data collection, obscurely called “Mobile-SCDRT”. Its a Java ME MIDP that runs on all those commodity mobile phones and is used by a community health Sub-Center for Data Reporting and Transmission (SCDRT). Now you know where that obscure acronym came from and I am unsure who gave it that “wanna-be” name.

That apart, the mobile application is being deployed part of a pilot in the 5 states of Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Nagaland and Gujarat. As part of the pilot 200 health workers from the above states receive a Nokia 3110c mobile phone with the application installed and use the application to report the routine health-related data that is collected by the Government of India as part of Health Management Information System (HMIS).

The following is an architectural overview of how the application works for those of you interested in the technical details:

So, DHIS2 is where the data gets added after being sent from the mobile phone and in DHIS2 you can do all the analysis and “use of data” for health program decisions. There are other nitty-gritty details of the application and lots of new learnings for me, but I’ll leave that to another blog entry for another day.

We have started the pilot in 2 states: Himachal Pradesh and Kerala. Its been running for close to a month now in these 2 states and from the looks of it, people are happy and excited to use it. Recalling an incident from the launch in Kerala:- When just about 15 minutes of looking into the application, a JPHN (Junior Public Health Nurse - as health workers are called in Kerala) could explain the whole application, its use and reporting procedure to her colleagues better than most of us could. It was a wonderful and humbling experience for us to see that people were so much wanting to use the application and learnt it so quickly. It was satisfying to see that it was helping the health worker to make her reporting process more efficient. What was more rewarding for her, as I understand now, was the job perk that she thought she got in the mobile phone. The mobile phone was not just a tool for reporting, but also something that she would use for calls and show it to her kids and family. Few JPHNs were instantly taking photographs of our launch using the mobile phones we provided. I hope I can have many such satisfying moments through my work in health informatics.

But not everything was perfect in all this. I for one realized, that logistics required for a project of this magnitude is not an easy job. Having a team of people in the state and within us at Delhi is a challenge. Discussions of inefficiencies and incapability of the team is a burden in itself to manage. Not everyone may have the goal to change the world and some might even be in it for the money. As for the logistics, we learnt early in the pilot at Himachal Pradesh that a “Step-by-Step” reference manual on using the application was a necessity for the health worker which she can refer to, when she’s at her home and using the application to report. Then there was the purchase of state-specific SIM cards and allocating mobile phone numbers to each health-worker and her reporting office. All this requires lots of planning and managing the logistics and repeated changing of plans has been a tough one for me.

The technical preparation of installing the application, creating the database and installing the server at the primary health centers, block hospitals and district health offices have also been somewhat of a mismanagement. Its been a complex process involving people with different work cultures and behaviors. But in the end the 2 pilots have been successful because its been an opportunity for health workers to report data more efficiently. Final results of the pilot await us, but the start has been great!

Realpolitik of Health Management Information System

HMIS or Health Management Information System has been quite a buzz-word around the Indian health machinery for sometime now. Its just that health-workers are now starting to understand. From the lay-man’s point-of-view, HMIS is a system of managing health related information. It is the process of collecting health-related data, making sense of that data to become information, understanding the relevance of information and making plans on how to use the information.

HMIS being an information system, surely has the scope of being managed through computers and it is done pan-India using an application called DHIS 2 (District Health Information Software v2). DHIS2 is an open-source Java web application and it is free for anyone to use. Free as in Freedom and free as in beer. And this has caused a stir of sorts because there aren’t a lot of things that you get free in life. I am sure some philosopher’s would be quick to tell me that nothing in life is free and so its true with DHIS as well!! But its for fact, cheaper than most other pieces of software competing in the HMIS space.

But we are not here to talk about DHIS, we are here to know the realpolitik of HMIS. Since NRHM (National Rural Health Mission) has poured in money into the health sector, lot of things have changed. It has improved health infrastructure, changed government’s outlook towards public health, generated employment and done a lot more. But it has also brought in realpolitik.

Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. Its “real” instead of “idealistic” and that is sometimes not a bad thing. Politics, in-fact isn’t a bad thing at all!! Health forever has been idealistic, doctors forever revered as people who save lives and government health machinery thought as part of goodwill governance. With these ideals, the Constitution of India enlists “Health as a state matter”. But who has the money and who gives the money, when we are talking about health??

Software systems have enormously increased the reach and speed of information exchange and data collection for health. DHIS2 and pro-HMIS crowd has created a nation-wide awareness on the usefulness of software systems for health monitoring. This has led to a power struggle within different groups not just within the government, but NGOs working in the health sector and consulting groups that work with the states. The power game has just begun with software and technology proving as powerful weapons for whosoever wants to use it. In this hype for HMIS, simple portals that capture data for national level have fetched huge chunks of money and each day additional money is spent on building many more such systems. Then there is the power struggle to capture the market on who trains the cadre of health workers on these new technological advances that has somehow no relevance on health services.

I am just starting to see the “realpolitik”, which is definitely not bad as an ideology... Its just that health always seemed like a noble cause. I am now seeing it as a realist.

Indian Sues Google, Yahoo & Microsoft For Sex-Selection Ads

While India is celebrating its 61st Independence Day today, among other problems, Gender Inequality and Gender Imbalance is a major problem for the future of  India. And somewhere between the lines of the so-called non-intrusive ads that you see on web pages, techniques for sex-selection for an unborn child is being promoted. Or so thinks Sabu Mathew George, the petitioner in a case filed in Supreme Court of India against web advertising and search companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Gender Imbalance is a major problem that faces India in the next few decades. Although the Indian society at large is still unaware of the problem, from the statistics and ground work that I’ve seen while working with Men Against Violence & Abuse, the problem is a severe one and could become adverse in the coming decades. Gender Imbalance is a man-made phenomenon in India where an unborn child’s sex is determined before birth and if the child is a female, the pregnancy is aborted. It is this ruthless murder of unborn females that in some states the sex ratio for males to females is less than 0.7

But that is not what we are here to talk. Sabu Mathew George has filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India that certain ads displayed on search results and web advertise the process of sex-selection. The Supreme Court has sent notices in this regard to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in this regard and would like to hear their side of the story. The Indian law’s on Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act. states that advertisement of products and techniques to aid in the selection of an unborn child's sex is an offense. Thus, advertisement of such products are not shown in Print-media,  TV and Radio ads.

India’s Health Ministry and Ministry of Communications & IT have also been made respondents in the case because they have been non-responsive in stopping such ads. It should be interesting to see how these tech companies respond. If you look at it from a technical standpoint, such ads could have been easily spotted and not shown by these companies. There is already a procedure by which the content in ads is checked by these companies and can prevent such ads to be shown. Even the search results are moderated according to local laws and standards and it isn’t uncommon that the Chinese government have successfully changed the behavior of these companies.

May be these tech companies haven’t realized the magnitude of the problem or just ignored the law. But we are surely going to find out, if the Supreme Court holds them liable for such instances. Or can web companies just say that they are mediators and not content owners and get away.

Google had earlier stated in its Public Policy Blog that, “Think about the telephone system. We don't hold the telephone company liable when two callers use the phone lines to plan a crime. For the same reasons, it's a fundamental principle of the Internet that you don't blame the neutral intermediaries for the actions of their customers. Rather, the standard recognized worldwide is that Internet intermediaries are responsible to take action when they are put on notice of unlawful content through proper legal channels.”

Now that’s as awful analogy!! Telephone system is a one-to-one or conference system, where you don’t have your comments recorded for the entire world to look at. Neither can it be technically feasible nor morally acceptable to hear every call being made. Whereas content on the Internet, that is displayed as search results can very well be observed and banned, like has been done in China. In India, you have laws to stop it in other forms of media, then why should the Internet be any different?? There are obvious “report abuse” links to results and web displayed content. But the utter slowness in the response of such services is another reason why the system needs to be fixed on both the government side, tech-side and the users-side.

Google Employee Uses Street View for Marriage Proposal

What’s a grand way of proposing when you are a geek and work for Google?? Michael Weiss-Malik, a Google employee just showed us that if you are a Google employee you can use Google’s Street View to propose to your girlfriend. You can look below at the Street View where Google employees have all stood in line and co-ordinated their timings with the Street View car that takes pictures around the streets.

Drag and double-click to zoom in the image above, or view it on Google Maps

The Street View team actually decided to co-ordinate a pre-announced Street View run outside Google's Mountain View offices, with the idea that Googlers could line up along the street and appear in the imagery. There are also other interesting things that you can view from within this view or you can go ahead and download Google Earth and check out the Street View layer. Some nice fingers, some interesting characters, some photogenic cops await you in the full view!!

If you have been following the “Street View story”, yeah the privacy infringing one!, then you will realize that there are really do diametrically opposite views to that story... When Street View was first launched and then integrated inside Google maps, you had to stand up and notice that some people would get crazy to get in the frame. And like we have seen in the recent past, all kinds of pictures have been popping up in street view. Some of them have been funny, some nudist, some have been advertising and some have been for a social cause. But what really needs to be asked is whether there is anything like privacy on the streets ??

Obviously if you wanted privacy, you have your home... and if someone stills peeps in, you surely have those window panes and curtains to help you. But the entire point of Street View is that you can follow the street and find your places more accurately than anything a top-view map would tell you. Also it feels like you are actually in the place!!

Solaris & Xeon Break Million Messages Per Second

Sun Microsystems today announced that it has collaborated with Intel to not only provide the best throughput performance to date by breaking the million-messages-per second barrier, but also the lowest available network latency on a 1Gb Ethernet. This performance output was generated on a new financial services benchmark known as Reuters Market Data System 6.0.3 (RMDS).

The Intel-based Sun Fire™ X4150 with Solaris 10 provided the top-notch results for the benchmark and it indeed is superlative performance to reach million-messages per second. And more importantly its done on standard network topology instead of stacked topology, which can improve scalability but comes at a cost. Doing it with standard 1Gb Ethernet is surely an achievement. The performance by the system is highly dependent on the hardware which Intel has engineered and Sun has built. But Solaris also has contributed to the improved performance. Solaris has the least latency in message passing and network performance on it is excellent.

Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz applauded the new benchmark results and attributed much of it to Solaris. And he sure must be happy!! Sun Microsystems is very focused on Solaris/OpenSolaris these days with a lot of development work towards OpenSolaris. There is also a big PR machine running for openSolaris these days and some ol’ Netbeans guys have been moved to talk and explore the world on openSolaris. Sun Microsystems has got this target to make openSolaris big on the desktop with a distro-plan similar to Linux distros.

Congratulations to Sun on the new benchmark record!! It is definitely one of the strong forte for Sun to perform on the network, but the desktop move is a totally different ball-game. And why didn’t we have one of those largest hardware/microprocessor team from Sun make the system from UltraSPARC to perform that good instead of the Intel hardware ??

Xandros Acquires Linspire

Xandros, the maker of windows-like Linux, today announced that it has acquired another windows-like Linux called Linspire. Xandros has got a bit of popularity lately from a few OEM deals and that has made it expand its coffers a bit. The main goal of acquiring Linspire is the software installing and distribution system called “Click-And-Run”, which allows installing software from a online repository with a single-click

Linspire was probably one of the first Linux distribution to openly claim that it wanted to be like Windows. It was earlier called Lindows and then due to some Microsoft lawsuit got its name changed to Linspire. But even a name change didn’t inspire a lot of linux geeks and the audience for Linspire remains small till date.

Click-And-Run (CnR) though is one really nice innovation from Linspire. It inspired the openSuSE guys to develop something similar called “1-Click Install”, which is one of my favorite features in openSuSE 11.0.

Intel Invests in Solar Cells

With the rising fuel costs and the dangers of global warming by the use of carbon fuels, everyone seems to be looking at alternate sources of energy. The last week has been  specially interesting because 3 major tech companies, specializing in semiconductor manufacturing have got into manufacturing solar cells. Intel today announced that its spin-off SpectraWatt will be manufacturing solar cells for panel makers starting in the middle of next year.

Just last week, IBM had made similar announcement of manufacturing solar cells with Japanese semiconductor firm Tokyo Ohka Kogyo. Earlier to that HP said that it has licensed some technology to a solar panel startup called Xtreme Energetics. All these companies are putting their expertise in semiconductor manufacturing to improve solar cell efficiencies and decrease the cost of manufacturing these cells.

Intel Capital has put some $50 million into SpectraWatt and Cogentrix Energy, PCG Clean Energy and Technology Fund and Solon AG are also investing into Intel’s latest spin-off. SpectraWatt is going to manufacture these photo-voltaic cells at a fabrication plant in Oregon. After the Intel’s plant at Oregon is fully-functional it plans to churn out 60 megawatts worth of cells sometime in Q2-2009.

Hopefully all this means that cheaper solar panels can be used in homes and sufficient power can be produced at a good value-for-money. Today the cost of solar panels are way too high and produce too little power to make them practically replace normal power lines.

Mac Mini Will Be Dead Soon

If you have that cute-looking, small box from Apple that fits into any monitor called “Mac Mini”, then soon you may be the owner of a discontinued product. Rumours has it again that Apple has plans to kill the Mac Mini and replace it with something else. The death of Mac Mini has been predicted lot of times, but call it Steve Jobs insistence on a living-room computer or Apple’s love for small, Mac Mini has lived on...

But this time it could be little different... Apple has notified its partners that Mac mini will be soon reaching EOL (End-of-Life) and a newer product, possibly an addition to Apple TV will be launched. Mac Mini is the cheapest Mac available and it has been Steve Jobs favorite for long time. The “Cube” has lived on!! Apple has been working off late on consumer electronics that can be used in homes and living rooms along with TV. Apple TV surely hit that market, but isn’t as popular as one would want. Probably adding a computer and OSX to the Apple TV can help... It will be probably logical to have one product do it all

But the announcement from Apple about this product should come sooner rather than later. The Back-to-School season should be a good time to release the new product and help people make the switch to the cheapest Mac...

EDS Letter On HP Buy

The big tech buyout story of 2008 is not Microsoft-Yahoo merger (or Microhoo!) as people have been thinking. Its the big budget buy of EDS from HP. HP has just pulled off another Compaq-like deal, but this time its not for grabbing the hardware market. Its a lot more broader market that they wish to capture. And for the deal, HP will purchase EDS at a price of $25.00 per share.

The EDS buy is more of a services and IT outsourcing plan from HP. EDS has lots of data centers around the world and has perfect infrastructure for the future of the web and web-based services. On-demand-IT, popularized by IBM ads in recent years is probably the main focus of HP buyout of EDS. Unlike what people think, EDS is not just an outsourcing company. EDS has got lots of data centers and manages those very well. Thus, HP will keep the EDS name according to Ron Rittenmeyer, President and CEO of EDS.

Ron Rittenmeyer has written an email to his employees and informs about the buyout. Read his email below:

To the EDS Worldwide Team:
Today is a historic day for the future of all of us at EDS, our valued clients, our shareholders and the entire IT industry. EDS and HP have reached a definitive agreement for HP to purchase EDS.

This transaction would be the largest ever in the IT services market and would create a formidable global competitor. EDS would join the world’s largest technology company. HP enjoys a well-respected global brand and broad worldwide resources – along with a strong operational background.

When the transaction is completed, which is expected in the second half of the year, HP will establish a new business group and brand it EDS – an HP company.

Importantly, EDS would retain the brand all of you have worked so hard to build over the last 45 years. EDS headquarters will remain in Plano and I plan to continue as chairman, president and CEO of this new business group.

Obviously, this news means major changes for everyone involved. There are many questions to be answered and decisions to be made in the coming months. Ensuring a successful integration is our top priority.

What doesn’t change, however, is EDS’ commitment to provide excellent service for our clients. And, we will relentlessly pursue new business while continuing to build the best delivery process in our industry. The core values of EDS are shared by HP, which makes this even more of a winning combination.

In the weeks ahead, I promise to communicate often with you about milestones and decisions affecting our company and our careers. We will thoughtfully manage this entire transition process – just as EDS and HP have done for many other companies we have each acquired.

To begin the dialogue, I invite you to watch a broadcast tomorrow to discuss the transaction. It will air live at 1 p.m. Central time on our EDS Global Broadcast Network, and will be re-broadcast often over the next several days. You will receive more information on the broadcast shortly.

As we complete this agreement, I ask each of you to stay committed to your work, performing at the high levels of service we expect for our clients and from ourselves. I know I can count on you to deliver.

We are – and will remain – EDS.
Ron Rittenmeyer

Om Malik thinks its HP foray to move into the cloud. Nick Carr thinks differently. Only time will tell what HP plans on EDS... I agree HP wants a bigger market on the datacenters and may be an Amazon-like service is coming up!!

India Overtakes US For Mobiles, But Broadband Sucks

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released the latest figures on the number of subscribers using wireless network in India. According to the press release, India became the 2nd largest wireless network in the world, overtaking US and 2nd only to China. India has 261.09 million wireless subscribers and most of these are mobile phone users (GSM, CDMA and WLL).

• India becomes second largest wireless network in the world.
• 10.16 million Wireless Subscribers added in March 2008
• Subscribers base touched 300 million mark.

Mobile subscribers have been increasing at an exponential rate for sometime now and this was expected. Mobile voice services are pretty good across India and a lot of cities, towns, villages are under coverage area. But something needs to be done quickly about the data services. Wireless data services suck completely and WiMax is just starting to catchup with Reliance and TataIndicom boxing each other. The service quality for WiMax in cities is still below par and services needs to improve.

According to the TRAI figures, broadband users are at 3.90 million at the end of March. If you look at the figures, you'll realize broadband penetration is really really low. Even the growth rate is pretty slow... There are a few reasons to this and the poll at Trak.In shows some reasons. But I guess its a little more complex than what the poll shows.

Reasons for Low Broadband Penetration:

1. Illiteracy & Lack of Computer Knowledge: I think this is the primary reason why broadband penetration is low compared to mobile phone usage. You don't need much skills to talk on phone, but operating a computer and browsing the Internet is not as simple. It is partly to do with illiteracy in India, but as a programmer I can only believe that we need to make the User-Interface on the computer lot more intuitive. I feel really bad when I see new users struggle to use the computer and probably we need to improve the interface quite a bit.
   
2. Expensive Broadband: The entry-level broadband service in India is really not very costly. Its only that its costly in the long run because you have very few plans where you can get unlimited data download/upload. As soon as you realize the Internet is a big place, you already have downloaded too much and pockets start feeling lighter.
   
3. Poor Quality of Broadband Services: The downtime, low data speeds, big repair time, too much time to provide a connection are probably only adding to the problem of high cost.
   
4. Few Useful Online Services: Although this is changing slowly, there isn't much local stuff that you can do online. There isn't a online retailer like Amazon or useful online services like Pizza shops, cafe or Online hardware stores. Online banking and travel booking is popular, but still is far from mass market.

Actually it is a circle of things. The online services will improve if more people come online and more people will come online if there are useful services. Hopefully soon, one of these will improve and accelerate the growth of the other...

Google Space - Please Point-out the Aliens??

Google launched a new webpage called Google Sky, to do some space watching (Shouldn't it be called Google Space ?). Earlier Google Sky was part of the desktop application of Google Earth, but now with the efforts of Diego Gavinowich and other Google developers, Google Sky has been brought to the webpages.

Just like Google Earth and Maps, Google Sky's interface is the same zoom, move around. But Google Sky has got Infrared, Microwave, and Historical viewing options. Nice to look through those different views. Other things include images from Hubble, Chandra, Galex, Spitzer. Really nice images if you like astronomy and sky watching like me. Google Sky can also be used as an educational tool by school professors to explain the Solar system, which is shown through another section of Google Sky.

Now if only some one can make a thing like Wikimapia.org, where users can create there own listings on Google Earth images. Wikimapia really helps find places around a place with users labelling the places. I really want someone to show me where the aliens live. Then, I can keep looking at those planetary bodies and announce whenever an alien ship sets sail for Earth!! And as for other places around Earth, I've tried looking at Mars & Moon, but couldn't find aliens there :(

Control Your Computer From the Brain at $159

OCZ had recently shown the NIA (Neural Impulse Actuator) and had told that they have started mass production for the device. The NIA is a special device which EEG (electroencephalograph) signals into keystrokes and simulates the functioning of a mouse. Upon proper configuration, the NIA will allow users to control PC games without the use of a keyboard and minimal use of a mouse.

The TGDaily reports that the NIA may be available in the US for $159 and it seems a very good price to pay for a niche and futuristic device like this. The NIA isn't the first device to use brain sensing. Another device known as the Emotiv's EPOC also has similar functionality, but uses a different technology. The EPOC can understand facial expressions and detect congnitive actions like pushing, pulling etc.

The NIA is definitely going to change the experience of playing games just like the Wii did with its motion controller. But the motion controller is not even half as futuristic as the NIA. Producing enough of these devices will be challenge for OCZ in the coming months, just like Nintendo has with producing Wii. Although the NIA is a little expensive for an input device, its lot more than an input device...