Year: 2003

Motorola pulled a surprise today, announcing quite a few new phones for 2003. They look great, but since most are due in the second half of 2003 we won’t see these for real for quite a while.

Russ has the Nokia 7650… sounds very good including iSync compatibility, but still the P800 might be the one based on screen and my usage if I could become a one-piece guy.

There was a problem with the GPRS – but it wasn’t the phone, Telefonica is having computer problems this morning so it’s not set up yet. The phone store is across the street from my office, so I went back over to see what the problem was. While waiting for my salesperson to finish up with another customer, I whipped out the Nokia and started playing some games. Full color arcade games in my hand! WOW! The experience was the same as if I pulled out my Gameboy. Seriously. I was so absorbed I didn’t notice that the guy was done and the customer behind me had to point out that it was my turn. DOH! This mobile game stuff is going TO ROCK THE EARTH.

I forget what a freak I am sometimes. The guy who sold me the phone had the same exact phone and was eager to show it off to me – including a T-Mobile video app he got from somewhere (I didn’t realize that the 7650 could do video!). I was all excited and started talking about Symbian and programming, etc. He looked at me like I had three heads. Okay. Next subject.

The only other .sis Symbian program that was on the CD was an iSync upgrade. So I installed that and now it looks like I can sync to the internet!!! Yeah, baby! I’ll have to explore that some more. I’d love to be able to use my server as a central repository for to-dos, calendar etc.

I want a dock. I want this thing to sit up. I guess that’s what the more PDA-like P800 is all about.

-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]

The new high-definition audio discs (DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD) coming soon are being engineered to be as useless as possible. Specifically designed never to be integrated into a PC, sporting proprietary digital connectors that will not talk to any general-purpose, open device, though these haven’t been developed yet so early adopters will have to make do with analog-only outputs.

Yet both kinds of discs, despite being developed in the ‘Net-head late ’90s, are odd throwbacks to the pre-PC era. Most obviously, they’re the same size as the original CD. Can you name any other digital device that hasn’t shrunk in 20 years? The players for them are bulky, closer in size to Sony’s first CD decks than to Apple’s iPod, which holds 400 albums rather than just one.

Flip one of the players over, and you’ll find another retro sight: analog output jacks. To prevent buyers from running off bit-for-bit copies of the new discs, gear-makers have agreed not to put digital ports on either DVD-A or SACD players. Yet old-fashioned analog connections erode pristine digital sound and are prone to interference from televisions, lights, and computers—the objects they’ll be placed next to in modern homes.

The real deal-breaker is that a stand-alone player is the only kind available. By manufacturers’ consensus, there won’t be any network ports on the players, nor will there be any DVD-A or SACD drives available for computers. Some makers are promising a digital link from the player to a home-theater console, but it’ll be deliberately incompatible with any of the jacks on a computer. In bringing the CD up to date with the PC, the music industry is also trying to split the two technologies asunder again.

It’s no wonder that gearheads who buy the latest, greatest everything have ignored DVD-A and SACD in favor of MP3 players and CD burners. Computer-friendly music formats let you archive hundreds of albums on a laptop, create custom playlists that draw from your entire collection, and download them to portable players smaller than a single CD jewel box. Today’s fans want their music in a form that fits the pocket-sized, personalized, interconnected world of their computers, cameras, phones, and PDAs. Asking digital consumers to give that power back in exchange for a better-sounding disc is like offering them a phonograph needle.

LinkDiscuss [Boing Boing]

Sounds good to me…

As cable companies continue to increase the cost of broadband service, and as telcom monopolies are strengthened by changes in FCC policy, it is now absolutely clear what the broadband endgame will be in the US: wireless. Think of a city where every single street light is a node in a mesh (for an example, see meshnetworks), and thus where the cloud of the internet sits on the street like the fog in San Francisco. For almost nothing, cities could provide IP light, as cities provide street lights. Neutral, end-to-end, fast, and cheap. (Apologies for this uncharacteristically optimistic post. Just a preview of the moot.)

[Lessig Blog]