Turkish Spark- Using Cisco Telepresence

We held the TurkishSpark "across the world" event yesterday at Cisco offices in San Jose and Istanbul. Cisco Turkey General Manager Umit Cinali and I sponsored the event to encourage the interaction and show the value of TelePresence in driving innovation.

Led by co-founders of TurkishSpark,  Babur Ozden and Kerim Baran, and organized by TABC (Turkish American Business Connection) organization board member Can Demiray, the event covered two hours worth of business ideation and feedback to specific business proposals.  We spoke with six entrepreneurs from Istanbul while five entrepreneurs joined us in San Jose.

This was the first TP experience for most of the attendees, who described it as "This is like flying First Class vs. Economy. I am having a hard time imaging going back to Skype!"

TurkishSpark

We are in the middle of the first Turkish Spark session over Cisco Telepresence. We have five entrepreneurs in Istanbul and six in San Jose over a live TP link. Babur Ozden, Kerim Baran and I are reviewing the ideas and proving feedback.

This is the first TP session between Silicon Valley and Istanbul to review venture opportunities.

More to come on how these entrepreneurs fare with their ideas.

Role of the DataCenter in Delivering the Mobility Experience

I have been pondering the interlinkage between the evolution of the datacenter and the delivery of the mobility experience on our smartphones and tablets. Companies like Amazon and Apple, along with many mobility app providers are living through these two forces that are fueling each other's growth.

Here are the questions that I am exploring

1. What is the organic linkage and trending of mobility subs and applications vs. usage of datacenter capacity and virtualization?
2. Do they DataCenter solution teams understand the challenges driven by mobile apps, the constant roaming etc of the mobile experience? Do they incorporate these or are they mostly focused on providing the best infrastructure for appls and virtualization?
3. Are there good ways to solve problems that touch both ends, such as security, experience optimization, monitoring etc by a single provider? It is interesting to observe that many of the Data Center solution providers do not have significant presence on the mobile client, and vice-versa.

As more services move to the cloud and are delivered into a mobility environment, these questions are going to spawn more solutions, and of course startups...

Chime in to the discussion.... More to come as I explore the space.

WIMM Labs

I attended the Mobility and Gadget Summit organized by the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley yesterday. There were the usual pitches about the evolution of the market, Wi-Fi etc. Several new and interesting ideas were noteworthy:

1. WIMM- This is a lab that is churning out wearable computers. The concept is novel- how small can you bring computing into and what do you do with it?

2. Honest Technology: Home and portable office devices using the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band to transmit video from the iPhone, iPAD, Android Phone to a gadget attached to a TV. The company representative admitted that when sending HD video, a home access point running 802.11g would be basically saturated!

Overall, it was a good crowd asking great questions and capturing the momentum on mobility.

USA has more cellular connections than people!

Today, I attended a review of the recent CTIA show, at the Telecom Council of Silicon Valley. It was a good way to learn about all of the significant news from the show, without having to travel and stay at a hotel for two days...

A few fun facts drove very exciting discussions. First, the US now has more cellular connected devices than people. about 330M devices vs 300M population. Unlike other parts of the world, where many people have two phones, or phones with two SIM cards, the US population demonstrates a faithful commitment to their mobile service providers? So, where do these mystery devices come from? It turns out that cellular connected tablets, cars and Kindles now make the difference!

Second, the value or Siri is becoming more apparent as users take advantage of its features. The deep integration of Siri into iOS enables all applications to take advantage of Siri capabilities vs. running a separate application. I have not tried Siri myself yet. If you have, please post a comment and let us know what you think.



Happy mobility!

IOS 5- First Experiences

I've been using an IPhone 4 since it first came out. Its been a pleasurable experience, in all respects, with a few hickups along the way with rogue apps forcing me to learn how to reset the unit (hold the power and home buttons down simultaneously for a few seconds).

I just upgraded to iOS 5. The good, bad and the ugly:

The Good: iCloud: So obvious, yet, done in the Apple way. If you buy a song on, it shows up everywhere, pretty much at the same time. Downside- if there are multiple devices at home, your internet connection slows down considerably. In our case, after I purchased a song, the downloads started for the iTouch and the home PC, particularly slowing down our 801.11b/g wireless connection around the house.

The bad: The iPhone 4 slowed down noticably. I am guessing that this is a way to move folks to the IPhone 4s. I cannot imagine how sluggish a 3GS would be with iOS 5.

The ugly: In the hope of making the e-mail client more "corporate" Apple added a few features to mark multiple e-mails to be read or deleted. This is certainly helpful for those of us who receive 100's of e-mails a day. While doing so, the understated elegance of the user interface seems more cluttered. The buttons have three words on them. For example "Delete Selected Messages".. Factually correct and probably more idiot proof, but visually cluttered.

More on iOS 5 after a few weeks.

Happy Weekends!

TED?

I've been reviewing a set of fascinating talks on TED. They range from the inspirational, to the inquisitive, to funny conversations, that in all cases are thought provoking.  You can view these on your iPhone TED application on the road, or on your PC. Well worth checking out.

Happy TED'ing!

Steve Jobs- Mona Simpson- Nature or Nurture?

Steve Jobs' passing away is revealing his roots and family. I find it fascinating to understand nature vs. nurture origins of a person's demeanor, life objectives etc.

I think many knew that Steve Jobs was raised by his adoptive parents. What many are discovering now is that his biological father was of Syrian origin  (still alive and living in Reno, NV). His sister Mona Simpson, from the same mother and father is also an accomplished author. So either the bilogical  father and/or mother had an extraordinary set of genes that manufested in a powerful creative capability! They seem to have so many common traits and drive, that it makes you wonder what the real role of nurture is in the overall road of life we take. Fascinating!

Steve Jobs passed away

Steve Jobs died today. The Apple web site is showing a full page picture. There is full coverage on the WSJ as well.

Many of us have enjoyed the fruits of Steve Jobs' vision, with the myriad of products and more importantly, experiences he has delivered to the world.

With this news, I reflected upon Steve Jobs' impact on my personal life. I had purchased an Apple IIPlus on November 3, 1981. A date I still remember, when I brought home the creme colored box that I had paid $1081.00 which came with a gargantuanm 48K of memory. I had to use a casette recorder and an old TV until I could afford to buy floppy drives and a green screen 9 inch monitor...

That experience was the catalyst that eventually brought me to the Valley. I started with the ability to program on my own computer, to writing and selling my first software product and then building the hardware, and so it goes. A career and personal journey that Steve Jobs guided with his vision...


Thank you Steve Jobs for all of the wonderful experiences  you have brought us.  There is a bright star in the sky for you. You will be dearly missed.

Managing Hype Curse-Apple's challenge

After making my bold predictions yesterday about the iPhone 5 today's post will be about why Apple didn't deliver upon these predictions. Did you think I was going to admit I was off ?

Apple has build such as huge wave of expectations around a new iPhone 5, that the announcement of the iPhone 4S landed with a quiet THUD... Any iPhone 4 user will tell you that it is still a fantastic product, crisp in its responsiveness and very much an elegant design. A faster CPU will always help and faster downloads will certainly increase the responsiveness of cloud applications.

I think the less visible and more significant aspects of the iPhone 4S are buried inside the case:

1. CDMA and GSM network technology in one phone: It appears that there is one product model that supports both. This helps CDMA users with travel outside of the CDMA network range, particularly for Verizon users who conduct business outside of the US. While not  a large population, clearly one that racks up large monthly bills. New York City glitterati that hate the large gaps in ATT coverage in the city's concrete canyons can now have their cake and eat it too. Also, for many corporate accounts, having international roaming access is check-list item. This phone covers those use cases. Apple has likely used a Qualcomm chip set that allows for both radios to co-exist at minimal incremental cost.

2. Much Faster graphics: Apple is claiming 7x graphic performance: Sony and Nintendo, watch out on this one. Apple is taking clear advantage of its position as the uber mobile experience device to make further forays into the gaming space. Observing the usage of my iPhone 4 (by our five year old) and my 8 year old daughter's IPhone 3GS usage for gaming purposes, I can attest to the ease of use and convenience of having games on hand wherever we go. I wonder who is the winner of the graphics chipset award on this one.

3. Sprint as a channel: Sprint was the last large mobile network that Apple had not served. capturing another 20 million subscribers and their long-term loyalty is a considerable feat, likely enabled by the iPhone 4S, and its successors.

Now, lets get back to what I said, and why they did not deliver:


1. More COLOR choices: Too complicated to manage the logistics I suppose. It took Apple a year to deliver white. How about a cover anyone?

2. Larger screen, in the same frame size: This is likely reserved for iPhone 5.

3. Thin is in: iPhone 5.


4. Addition of Near Field Communications: iPhone 5.


6. Mini Me: Yes!! Apple is coming to grips with the need to capture the broader base of the mobile phone pyramid. In Apple's case, this is the middle girth, not the very bottom base- that's for the iPod shuffle... Pricing the IPhone 3GS at $0 was a good move. As long as applications work reasonably well and downloads are at acceptable speeds, there will be plenty of takers of IPhone 3GS's.

Happy iPhoning

One more iPhone 5 Posting- My predictions for the not so obvious

Today is the day Apple announces the iPhone 5. The biggest anticipation is what will be the big surprise  beyond the 8 megapixel camera and even faster processor. Here are my top predictions:

1. More COLOR choices: Based on the strategy from the iPod- we will see a RED and or PINK IPhone options. While cases can certainly add that flair, the front of the iPhone has remained monochromatic since the beginning, and may be about to chance.


2. Larger screen, in the same frame size. How can you do this? Bring the speaker and camera closer to the screen. 


3. Thin is in- This is one is not a secret. the IPhone can certainly be more svelte! 


4. Addition of Near Field Communications for wallet and other similar applications.


6. Mini Me: A smaller, less expensive version of the iPhone to capture the masses. The agreement signed with Sprint, which has a slightly lower ARPU customer base was a signal that there is an attempt to broaden the base of users. Or perhaps the 3GS form factor and screen resolution is going to be made available in CDMA and at a lower price.


We'll see how accurate these predictions were in less than an hour!

Admitting the obvious- Mission Statement Change

Its been a long time coming. I have felt it creeping up on me for several years now. I must confess that admitting this, I thought, would be capitulation. Then I realized that I was already living this in my daily life, so might as well  preach what I practice...

I changed the headline of my blog today from Telecom Life to "Mobility and Cloud Life". The first part is my personal passion. Delivering a seamless experience of a mobile life to people in their personal and work lives, which are more often than not, intertwining. What we care more about it what we do and how it brings value- Personal enrichment, satisfaction, earnings and more. How we do things have often evolved..

We sometimes think that technology has enabled us to do things differently. My personal belief is that technology is simply manifesting our desires and is getting closer to how we really want to experience life in its fullest. Imagine how life was in Paris, Istanbul and New York 100 years ago. The social networks of the time were probably as fast as Linkedin and Facebook of today- within the city limits. The new mobility experiences are simply expanding the geographic reach and keeping the engagements going 7/24. Otherwise, our yearnings to connect are the same as before.

Please enjoy this haunting song performed by Rokia Traore, complements of TED. Only can the global networks and cloud can deliver the emotion of sounds from far away lands so vividly...

More on the Cloud life in a subsequent post.

Soundhound is AMAZING! Ultimate Expression of Mobility

As we live our mobile lives, work, play, home life appear to intertwine themselves ever more. I notice myself wanting to reach different information at the whim of the moment, and my iPhone always seems to be ready to serve.

Today's AHA experience was with SoundHound, an app on my iPhone. I was shopping at Trade Joe's (more on that on a separate post) where I heard a song being played in the store. It was one of those tunes that I had listened to on the radio countless times but had not been able to catch the name. It also seemed from a long time ago that it just was not being played on the radio often anymore.

There was a lot of chatter, with Moms shouting at kids, grand mothers chosing picking cans etc. I simply pointed my IPhone to the ceiling speaker and activated Soundhound. Within 6-7 second, I had the name.

I pressed the Download from ITunes logo. Within 20 seconds, connected over the free ATT Wi-Fi from Starbucks near the parking lot, I had my song for a mere $1.29.

This is the ultimate expression of MOBILITY. Not just the fact that I am mobile, but that I did something on the spot, that would have been a considered magic just a few years ago.


In case you are curious of what song deserved so much commotion, it is Voices Carry by 'Til Tuesday

Is Blackberry on the rim?

I was a huge fan of Blackberry devices in the mid 2000's. I had the Pearl- which had a great google maps application that provided excellent directions practically anywhere in the world. The e-mail worked well, and the calendar was usable to conduct business efficienctly while out of the office.

Now, I have all of that and a lot more on my iPhone. I somewhat miss the tactile keyboard since my rate of typing is certainly slower. But I still would not give up the Yelp app, the Amazon App, Evernote, and my huge library of music and podcasts.

Today's Wall Street Journal chronicled the struggle of RIM executives on deciding what their device stood for- business or consumer. This lack of clarity, and a high risk OS transition, appear to be the underlying causes of RIM's malaise.

I think that the solo focus device game is over. Our lives are driven by a seamless mobility experience that assumes an interplay of work and play. Neither can be missing from the services that follow us everywhere we go. There will always be a hard-core group of business only users. However, they are enticed by the infinite choice of apps that Apple and Android offer.

What do you think RIM's chances are for survival in the long term?

Roasted Apple? Amazon's new move

I read Amazon's release of Kindle Fire with delight. While the details of the product are still emerging, Amazon again pulled off a cleaver feat, building upon their strengths in content and cloud, while still delivering a disruptive price that will certainly appeal to the next rung of masses who probably found the iPad a tad pricy for their disposable income.

Amazon's move re-orders the players in the space. My September 2011 tablet ecosystem ranking is:

1. Apple iPad- still the gold standard. Lots of apps, but now the new premium
2. Amazon Kindle Fire- While still not in peoples hands, a very compelling story that will certainly capture the amazon customer base
3. Androids- Samsung, HTC and the rest. Great hardware but a very fragmented market, with no unified app story. Googles acquisition of Motorola, and Samsung's decision to pay royalties to Microsoft on Android certainly have chainged the two foundational premises of the Android story: (1) its free, (2) All are equal in Google's eyes- which was really not true but was close enough...

4. RIM- How long will they last?
5. HP- WebOS- back from the dead at $99 per tablet?

Let me know if you agree?