Speeds and Feeds

Mobile data traffic is doubling every nine months, according to Cisco Systems. By 2013, mobile traffic will hit 2 exabytes--2 million terabytes--per month.

For some vendors, the growth rate is even higher. AT&T says its network load has been growing by 4.5x per year for the last two years, in large part (I assume) because of iPhone sales. You may have read about AT&T's pledge to spend over $12 billion this year to expand its wireless and broadband networks, including new 3G spectrum with better coverage and trials of 4G service.

At the Linley Group's Tech Processor Conference this week in San Jose, Calif., we learned what effect this growth is having on equipment makers, especially the companies making the microprocessors that go into network gear.

According to that same Cisco study, the problem goes well beyond iPhones. A 3G-equipped laptop "can generate as much traffic as 450 basic-feature phones" and 15 times the traffic of an iPhone or BlackBerry.

Networks have also gotten smarter, so network processors have much more work to do. Instead of just hundreds or thousands of clock cycles of work per packet on the network, new functions like firewalls, intrusion detection, and antivirus scanning to keep smartphones and laptops safe can require 100,000 cycles of processing on each packet.

Factoring in the growth in the network itself, Michael Coward of Continuous Computing, a company that sells equipment, software, and services to the telecom market, said that network operators need to achieve a 1,200x boost in processing performance between the systems deployed in 2008 and those that will be needed in 2013.

I received an interesting e-mail from a reader over the weekend. Dr. Katherine Gold, a lecturer with the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, had some questions related to Netbooks (or small notebooks), broadband Internet access, and physical computer security. After some discussion, Dr. Gold and I decided to see if some of you might be able to help answer her questions.

Here's the situation: Dr. Gold is setting up a research project to investigate the benefits of online support groups for low- income women in the Detroit area who have recently suffered the loss of a stillborn child.

Most women benefit from such services, but they tend to be less available to the poor for because they are less likely to have computers and Internet access. Also, these women often have other children to care for, jobs to hold down, and limited transportation options, so they may not be able to take full advantage of Internet access at public libraries or other facilities.

In Dr. Gold's experience, the greatest need for support often comes at night, when such facilities aren't open, anyway.

The bottom line here is that Dr. Gold wants to supply her participants with computers they can keep at home for the duration of the study, along with some kind of Internet connection.

There are several key challenges for this approach: cost, convenience, theft resistance, ease of use, maintenance, and so on.

Dr. Gold and I agree that a Netbook--the original concept of a Netbook, a machine no larger or more expensive than necessary to provide basic Internet access--would provide a good platform for this application. A properly selected and preconfigured system would provide the necessary functionality at minimum cost. A Netbook is both less attractive to burglars and easier to secure than a desktop PC with a separate display and keyboard.

The Acer Aspire One is a small but complete notebook computer.

(Credit: Acer)

In fact, when Dr. Gold wrote to me originally, she had already identified what I think is probably the most appropriate off-the-shelf solution: the $99 special offer from Radio Shack for an Acer Aspire One with built-in wireless broadband and Wi-Fi connectivity.

The only drawback to this offer is that it requires a two-year commitment to a $60-per-month AT&T wireless data contract, which adds up to another $1,440 on top of that $99 retail price. That's a lot of money for a study like this, especially when it's scheduled to last only one year.

Dial-up access would be cheaper, but it would preclude testing the therapeutic value of high-bandwidth Internet services such as videoconferencing and would likely interfere with ordinary telephone usage, which makes it a nonstarter in many households.

Dr. Gold provided some statistics on the stillbirth problem: it's 10 = times more common than Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), involved in 1 in 100 births in the Detroit area. As one might expect, stillbirth leads to much higher rates of depression and anxiety disorders compared to live birth, and these problems have significant social costs.

Stillbirth is three times more common among African- Americans in Detroit than among whites there, explaining the special value of extending Internet-based therapy to lower-income women.

I suggested that a corporate sponsor might be willing to help defray the costs of the hardware and Internet access, and that was one of the considerations that led us to this post. It seems to me that a study like this could help demonstrate that the value of small notebooks goes well beyond students, and the value of wireless broadband goes well beyond business travelers.

I'd also like to draw attention to something that's always been obvious to me: "rugged" is the corollary to "small."

Smaller notebooks are more likely to be carried around, particularly without the protection offered by a briefcase or backpack, so they ought to be more rugged as well. There are a lot of low-cost small notebooks out there, but there are few, if any, low-cost rugged models.

Ruggedness lends itself to theft resistance as well; the traditional Kensington security slot is less effective on a machine with a flimsy plastic case and a lightweight internal metal frame.

Another thing we'd like to hear about from you folks out there--have you had any experiences with Internet-based theft deterrence and recovery services such as Computrace LoJack for Laptops? Such a service could be a helpful addition to this study and similar applications.

Feel free to comment below, or write directly to me and Dr. Gold. (Addresses obfuscated a little to deter spam.)

I'll post updates as Dr. Gold's project moves along.

(Sheesh, I've been busy lately. I had more spare time when I was employed!)

Ever since I got my iPhone 3G in late July, I've been keeping track of the things I like--and don't like--about it.

Since Apple is rumored to be releasing the next major iPhone firmware update today, I thought I'd run through the list now, and then see how the new firmware changes things. Many of these comments apply to the iPod touch as well.

The things I like are, generally, the same things everyone likes. The iPhone is feature-rich, well integrated, well supported by independent software developers, and fun to use.

The things I don't like are, generally, software features that ought to be present but just aren't.

Each time I discover another one of these missing features, I jot it down in my iPhone WTF list. WTF, of course, stands for "Where's the feature?"

Muting and sounds
For example: Where's the feature to mute the phone? You may point to the little toggle switch on the left side, but no, that just mutes the ringer and certain audio alerts, not the whole phone. On my old Palm Treo, the mute switch darn well muted everything, as if the switch disconnected the speaker wires themselves.

On the iPhone, there's no way to predict which sound sources will respect the mute switch. Calendar alerts do; alarms don't. These are good choices--I like knowing that the alarm function will still wake me up even if I mute the phone before going to sleep--but hardly intuitive.

Alarm volume is controlled by the ringer volume, but even the minimum ringer volume is still audible.

Application-generated sounds have a separate volume control. If you're not in the iPod application, which has a volume slider, I think the only way to adjust this control is to use the volume rocker switch while an application is making sounds. Sometimes, that's after the phone has already started to annoy the people around you.

Bottom line: I can't find a way to make the unit completely silent without going into multiple Settings panels and applications, and even that isn't completely effective because some applications (as exemplified by the otherwise valuable Phone Aid) will turn the volume back up when they run.

Alerts and Calendar app
While I'm on the subject of alerts: in the Calendar application, where's the function to set an alert for the exact time of an event? Sometimes I just want to beep myself at 10 a.m. to make a phone call, for example. I don't want to have to set the time for 10:05 a.m. and the alert for "5 minutes before." I love the fact that Calendar supports up to two alerts for the same event, but I wish I could set them to, say, 15 minutes and 0 minutes respectively. This problem could be solved by providing a "Custom" time choice for both of the alerts.

Apple's iPhone 3G

(Credit: Apple)

The Calendar app also has the worst user-interface design in the whole iPhone, I think. To select the date and time for an alarm, you spin three wheels apparently stolen from the game show The Price Is Right. The minutes wheel is so easy to spin that in going from :00 to :30, I commonly spin right past :30 and back to :00. Apple has developed many ways to select dates and times for other systems and applications; this is by far the worst.

The Calendar app does something else that's kind of silly. In the daily view, most events get two lines of text: the title and location. Displaying these two lines takes up about one hour of the day. For a shorter event--one scheduled for 30 minutes, say--the two lines get squeezed into one line in an attempt to maintain the orderly appearance of the schedule.

But come on, Apple! The lines on a sheet of paper are fixed. The lines on a computer display aren't. Stretch the lines apart so that every event gets the space it needs! Jeez, this isn't rocket science.

Similarly, a long event has plenty of room to display additional information, such as the notes associated with the event--but instead, the event ends up with two lines of text and a bunch of wasted blank space. Display the notes, and shrink the event if that helps to keep the whole day on the screen. I hate having to scroll the Day display just to show two events.

The Calendar app doesn't handle multiple-user event scheduling very well. Invitations received by the iPhone's Mail app aren't understood by the phone. I can go look at the message on my Mac and add the event to my calendar there, and eventually the event shows up on my iPhone, but that's not so good when I'm traveling. And even then, the event can't be edited on the iPhone--not at all, not even to change the times.

The Calendar app does something very nice: the icon on the iPhone's home screen shows the current day and date. So, where's the feature? Why don't all of Apple's apps do this sort of thing where appropriate? The Clock app icon always shows 10:15. The Weather app always shows sunny and 73 degrees. The Stocks app shows a random squiggle. Sure, updating all these icons would give the iPhone some extra work to do--so Apple should provide a "Live icon updates?" setting and have some rules about how often the updates should happen. I think the slight increase in overhead would usually be worth it.

... Read more

It's been 19 days since I tried and failed to get a new iPhone 3G, but today I became eligible for the discounted price, and at 7:50am I was in line at the Apple Store at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose.

As you can read in my previous post, I couldn't get the usual low price for my new iPhone because I had 19 days left on my current 2-year AT&T service contract. Apple was willing to sell me the phone for an extra $200, but I decided I'd rather wait until today.

I was the sixth person in line, and by 8:00am when the store opened, there were five more iPhone buyers in line behind me.

As we lined up, we received cards from an Apple employee reserving the particular model we wanted. I'd estimate the fellow had about 40 cards. I asked if the number of cards corresponded with the number of iPhones in stock, but he wouldn't say. Another Apple guy followed behind, checking our AT&T upgrade eligibility. I did this myself last night, so I was sure it would be okay this time, and indeed it was.

The doors opened right at 8:00am and ... Read more

On Thursday, I attended MobileBeat 2008, a new conference here in Silicon Valley focused primarily on cell phones broad enough to encompass closely related gizmos like Apple's iPod Touch and--at least in theory--mobile Internet devices.

The event was hosted by VentureBeat, where a great many blog posts can be found that go through all the sessions and significant announcements from the conference. (My thanks to VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi, who invited me to the conference.)

... Read more

Okay, this gets a little complicated. More complicated than it should, really.

Apple's iPhone 3G

(Credit: Apple)

I am an AT&T customer. My current two-year contract is up on July 30-- just 19 days from now.

Normally, AT&T allows customers to upgrade early by paying a moderate fee.

As CNET's Dawn Kawamoto put it in this blog post, "eligibility for an upgrade discount, the carrier said, is generally determined by amount of time remaining on a current contract and the payment history." One version of the upgrade rules is visible on Best Buy's website.

The worst-case situation, one might suppose, is that... Read more

CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh blogged Thursday on "Ten things that finally killed Net neutrality."

Most of his reasons related to a lack of political support from both Republican and Democratic politicians and bureaucrats. But those all sound like temporary delays to me.

I'm pretty sure Net neutrality will pop back up again because there's an inherent conflict between the business interests of network operators and the desires of ... Read more

You might wonder why I'm posting again so soon after that twelve-post blogging marathon at Hot Chips. Well, I got a new gizmo last night and I just had to write about it.

Two years ago yesterday, I bought a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860 (a PCMCIA cellular modem card) from Cingular for my Apple PowerBook G4. I also ... Read more