Then develop solutions for that today.

Why do I bring this up?

Many “mobility products” today tend to address present day needs. We tend to take the desktop paradigm, and build products around it. We take present-day situations, and then try to invent a better mousetrap.

From my perspective, that is wrong. The desktop is a paradigm beaten to death, and if you look closely, it has never attained the kind of traction that the walkman or TV did. And the next billion people (and they are already here – we call them the “iPod Generation”) will not be interested in such an archaic approach to dealing with information, communication and entertainment (ICE).

And those billion people are our customers of tomorrow.

To understand what I am talking about, let’s consider the concept of mobile games.

Most people would understand this to be “games on the mobile”. I.e. standard games (like quake, or Doom or just plain old chess or even tic-tac-toe).

That is addressing the old world, the existing desktop users, where everything happens within the confines of the desktop or (by extension through the Internet) in the virtual world.

That’s not addressing the next billion people.

However, have a look at this.

Go ahead, click the play button on the video.

You are watching someone play a game on a mobile device, but with a startling difference – he is interacting with the real world.

That is a very simple, but effective example of taking into account what the world of mobility will be like for people in the future – even a year from now.

We have to stop thinking about these short-term, “let’s do this for today” kind of “innovations”, and start thinking ahead.

Things we can assume about devices in the future (and I am talking about the future that is 12 months away – could be less):

1. Devices with full colour screens
2. Devices with higher screen resolutions
3. Devices with far more memory
4. Devices with far more storage
5. “Always on” connectivity
6. Widespread coverage
7. Low bandwidth costs
8. Fairly high network speeds
9. Better CPU performance (does not mean “faster”)
10. Users who are not tied to PCs

If you take all of the above into account, what kind of application would you build for people who live in that kind of environment? What would they want, what would they need (and remember “want” and “need” are two different things).

I watched endless discussions about “social networks” over time. I didn’t comment, because disagreed with the notion of the existing “social networks” being the next big market that mobile computing should address. Social networks like MySpace are a “today” phenomenon. They are fairly closed systems that leverage their captive audiences and won’t open up to outsiders. Some of them are opening up (e.g. FaceBook) by offering APIs for third party applications, but in the end the environment is still tightly controlled by the people running that particular network.

The real social networks that will be created in the future will not be controlled by commercial entities like MySpace, Hi5 or Facebook – they will be created by users.

The actual IM network providers (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc.) will be less relevant. They will facilitate, but they won’t control. We will see explosive growth of Organic User-Driven Networks (OUDNs) and content, and they will not be controlled by any single large entity.

Google has known this for ages, and that is why they chose not to go proprietary, but used a standard, XMPP based messaging system.

AOL has already rung the bell – adopting OpenID is a clear sign that they are going to start falling into line with Google’s plans, and Google in turn is making deeper inroads into the AOL control mechanics, and it would surprise no one if one day, the world wakes up to an AOL owned by Google. MS and Yahoo are retaliating by combining forces.

So you have Google+AOL+ICQ on one side, and MSN+Yahoo on the other.

Who wins will be decided not by the might of either camp, but whom the OUDNs side with.

And given that these OUDNs already use open standards like XMPP, guess who is going to win?

Success will come not to those who control the most users, but to those who facilitate and enable the most users.

The future, as I have always maintained, is open.

And our business is with the future. “Today” is history.

In a way, there are already products out there that address this future scenario. MunduIM (a product by the company I work for) has Jabber/XMPP support, which allows it to connect to most of these OUDNs. And MunduRadio provides access to almost limitless, user-created audio content.

What we need to do now is think outside the box.

How can we use these technologies to enable users to do things that they can’t do today? Things no one has even thought of? What other technologies will become feasible, given the specs of future devices and networks I listed above?

Streaming video is a given. And that probably means that we will have thousands of user-created Internet TV stations that a user can tune into. What video protocol/codec will make it? Do we assume today’s jerky, 160 pixel wide videos, constrained by both device performance and available bandwidth? Or do we realise that in the future, these limitations won’t exist?

What about plain old Instant Messaging itself? Do we really believe that IM will only be used to communicate with other users? Other humans? Or will we accept that it is possible that in the future, we may want to interact not only with other humans, but services? machines? Think that is farfetched? Try adding mama_pendse to your yahoo messenger and interact with it.

Think of unusual applications and situations. How would our technologies work there?

Two keywords that will play a major role:

1. Location
2. Presence

Given these two factors, an unbelievable range of possibilities begins to open up. We should be focusing on these possibilities.

So how about a round of reckless “imagineering” here?

Can you think of a short description of an idea for a mobile product that, based on information about user location and presence, can provide him/her a facility that can’t be availed of today?

Don’t think regular stuff like targeted advertising. That’s boring. Think of a scene in a movie like “Total Recall”. What would Arnie do with a mobile device like that?

Remember – every idea is worth discussing – no matter how small or silly *you* may think it to be – maybe some of the ideas can be combined into a completely new product!

Take the 10 points I listed above into account – these are not wild predictions – but are already becoming reality, so can be safely factored in.

None of the ideas need to be well-formed, with a business plan behind them. Let your imagination run wild. The more far-fetched, the better.

Now you are imagineering.

I need not have worried.

Sitting in the train, I was able to stay online for almost the entire trip, without having to pay a single penny more than I normally would. In fact, even when I reached Calicut, and there were issues with the campus WiFi (I could connect in the corridor, but not in the room), I had connectivity whenever I needed it.

On the way back, Yahoo’s Shanker “Shanu” Balan shut his notebook down halfway back to Bangalore, after spending most of the time downloading some stuff at 128 kbps. Connectivity issues? “Nope”. Then? “Notebook battery exhausted”.

Kalyan Varma, a security expert gone naturalist, has another tale to tell. He is currently deep in the jungles of South India, has access to electricity once a day for a couple of hours, and the people there haven’t even heard of the Internet. He tells me all this over Instant Messenger chat, while browsing the web, sitting under a tree somewhere in the middle of a lush green forest. And sends me a picture of a tiger that he photographed just minutes earlier.

And Dataquest’s Prasanto Kumar Roy emails me from his car, half way between Delhi and Gurgaon. And he assures me that someone else is doing the driving while he is typing – though I don’t quite believe him.

So what was this magic that Shanu, Kalyan, PKR and I were working with? How could we remain connected and online in the middle of nowhere?

Has wireless networking (WiFi) really spread so far and wide? Have the commercial connectivity vendors managed to do in India what is still a dream in the USA or Europe – country-wide availability of 802.11b/g connectivity — not just in cities and hotspots, but everywhere?

No, it hasn’t, and they haven’t.

Like so many people across India, we use wireless connectivity provided by our cellphone operators — GSM (GPRS) and CDMA based Internet connectivity, not WiFi.

“Sufficient” Connectivity

Many of us use our corporate LANs to connect to file servers to access files, databases, printers and other LAN services. These activities typically require quite a lot of bandwidth – in fact, many people complain about the “slow” speed of their switched 100 mbps LANs, and are already eying gigabit networks.

However, the need for speed notwithstanding, wireless LANs, using 802.11b (11 mbps shared) and 802.11g (54 mbps shared) are becoming very popular, especially among people for whom connectivity essentially means three things – email, web browsing, and possibly instant messaging. And all three use a common carrier – the Internet.

Unlike corporate LANs, Internet connectivity tends to be far slower – speeds as low as 28.8 kbps to a max of about 2 mbps are common, with consumer broadband services providing speeds of 28.8-512 kbps to homes (I will address consumer broadband services in a future article). While no one would mind faster speeds, it is a fact that even at 28.8. kbps over dialup, most people can get a lot of work done. I would term this “sufficient connectivity”.

“Perpetual” connectivity

The world has been holding its breath ever since wireless networks have started appearing at airports, coffee shops and of course corporate and education campuses. Everyone has been looking forward to being connected all the time, everywhere. Switch on your device (laptop or PDA), and you are connected to the Internet. Perpetual Connectivity.

To many, WiFi has been the most promising of technologies, and people have been looking forward to the time when WiFi services will become available everywhere.

Sadly, this has not happened and for a number of reasons, ranging from government regulations to commercial issues.

Filling the void

Cellular phone service companies provide data (and hence Internet) services via their phones, treating the phone handset as a “modem”. While GSM data services had been around for as long as cellular networks themselves, the extremely expensive, unreliable and slow (9.6 kbps) connection speeds, plus the fact that you still needed an account with an Internet service provider, made this pretty unpopular.

Sometime in 2003, things began to change. Cellphone operators in India began providing connectivity via their phones – GSM providers like Airtel used GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) as a medium to give speeds approximately equal to that experiences with a 54 kbps dialup connection, while CDMA providers like Reliance raised the bar considerably by providing speeds as high as 128 kbps.

The downer in all cases was the cost of connecting – with per kilobyte and per minute charges that quickly inflating the monthly phone bill to frightening levels. It was hardly surprising that consumers didn’t exactly take to these services like fish to water.

All this changed when the providers realised that in a volumes game, you need to make things attractive enough for the consumer, before you get to see large numbers of subscribers. And so, in late 2004, almost all cellular phone service providers introduced “flat rate” tariffs – you pay a flat amount, no matter how long you are connected, or how much data you transfer. And example of this is Airtel’s immensely popular GPRS-600 service – you pay Rs.600 per month for unlimited connectivity. Reliance recently introduced a similar plan for Rs.650 a month. Both providers saw a massive surge in people subscribing to these connectivity services, typically at the cost of networks that were still charging by the time or volume, who quickly began to look very unattractive.

Connectivity everywhere

By early 2005, it became common for many people to simply use their mobile phones as their primary Internet connectivity, especially users of mobile devices. Even when WiFi is available at, say, a conference or meeting, users find it more convenient to use their already configured GPRS or CDMA services via their phones, rather than struggle with configuring for the local WiFi network.

The first magic word – convenience.

Add to this that unlike WiFi services, cellular data services are available almost anywhere that cellular phone services are available. In a country like India, where mobile phones are quickly overtaking fixed-line phone connections, this means that you can stay connected just about anywhere that you can make a mobile phone call – i.e. everywhere.

The second magic word – anywhere.

And if you use a service from a company with a sane tariff plan (i.e. a “flat rate” plan), you end up paying exactly the same amount every month, no matter how much (and where) you use the services (provided you roam within the provider’s network, of course).

The third magic word – affordability.

And just to complete the picture, add predictability.

Workarounds

Sure, there are still hiccups involved, but these are usually one time, right at the beginning, when you first subscribe to the service. Once you have everything configured, you will find that you can go anywhere you want, switch on your notebook or PDA, and connect without having to think where you are.

Sometimes, however, you need to get a little bit creative.

Remember my talking about Kalyan in the jungle? Well, he had a problem – the place where he currently works (the Biligiri Rangana Temple Wildlife Sanctuary) does have faint signals from various providers, but the strongest one is by a provider who does not offer GPRS services. Kalyan is a geek first, and a naturalist next, and not being connected to the net is as painful to him as it is to me.

His solution?

He climbs a tree, and fastens his mobile phone to a branch at the top, so that he can get a stronger signal from his primary provider (Airtel). Then he climbs back down, sits with his back against the trunk of the tree, and connects, using his notebook or PDA, via his phone some 30 feet above his head, without using any wires.

How does he do that?

Using Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

But that is the topic for another article.

We already have a wired network fully in place. Does it make sense to consider Wi-Fi?

Your should consider Wi-Fi if you have laptop users who need to carry their laptops into common areas, like conference rooms, where wireless is far more convenient than wired access; or if you have executives who travel across offices and want connectivity in another office. Even with just one or two laptop users, the low cost of Wi-Fi enabling a conference room (around Rs 5,000, for an access point) makes it worth it.

Wi-Fi can also help you in two other ways: by extending your existing wired network to places that are not currently wired or are hard to reach, and providing services that are not currently feasible via a wired network

The former is easy to understand – by using Wi-Fi, you can provide network services in areas within your premise that were not included in the original cabling plan. This includes areas outside the building (such as balconies, terraces or even lawns), where it is not feasible to lay permanent wiring.

The latter is slightly more interesting. You could, for example, deploy Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone services on your premises, using several VoIP phone models now becoming available. Another service would be roaming, mobile connectivity, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), transport vehicles that cannot be wired to a spot (such as forklifts), security devices (such as cameras), etc.

Who should do the implementation?

If you just want a small setup (like extend connectivity within a conference room or a small office), then this is something your system administrator (or even you yourself) should be able to do with the greatest of ease. Today’s Wireless LAN (WLAN) equipment is so simple to use that in most cases, it is just a question of plugging it in and following the prompts.

In the less likely case that you need a campus-wide, full service WLAN, it is best you get professionals to come in and set it up, as there are some aspects of WLAN implementation that are beyond the scope of casual technician. One requirement would be a radio survey that maps the various parts of your campus in terms of accessibility via the WLAN (radio strength). This information allows a network designer to correctly place and mesh access points across the campus for uniform service quality.

What will it cost?

That depends on your requirement. WLAN equipment is getting cheap, but there are various classes of equipment. Corporate access points can be far more expensive than SOHO (small office/home office) oriented wireless routers. Also, the numbers involved will decide the over all cost.

But if you look at a small (and fairly typical) setup of maybe 3-4 users, needing to access the internet via a wireless router, you can expect the router to cost you around Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000. If you already have Internet connectivity in your wired network, then you already have some sort of router: you just need to ad a Wi-Fi access point (Rs 5,000).

Many current laptops have built-in wireless; if yours don’t, you need a network card (around Rs 2,000 per laptop).

Do I need a license?

In India, you can deploy 802.11b (the basic 11 Mbps version of Wi-Fi) freely indoor or within a campus. Outdoor usage beyond a campus, or the use of other standards like 802.11g (the 54 Mbps version), requires a license.

This is, of course, surreal-both versions use the same frequency range. We expect that 802.11g will soon be de-licensed as well, at least for indoor use.

All this applies to indoor or in-campus use. If you want to flood the neighborhood with Wi-Fi, you need a license.

So you can buy 802.11g equipment if you like, but to use it without a license, you must use it at the lower 802.11b speed. Until 802.11g is “opened up” in India.

What are the products available? Which do you recommend?

Today, Wi-Fi equipment is reaching commodity status. Lots of vendors are entering the market every day, and of course the gray market is flooded with products. Some well known names are, D-Link, Linksys (from Cisco), Netgear, and Multi-Tech, all of whom have well-priced products, all with the proper approvals required for operation in India. (In an informal survey, Dataquest found D-Link’s product range and availability to be a little better than the others’ during the course of the former’s Project W Wi-Fi related activity, but others may have caught up now).

It is difficult to recommend any particular product at this stage. Price plays a major role here – most products in this category tend to perform similarly. However, in our experience, the product range and availability seems a little better with D-Link than with the others.

Can I start in a low cost and scalable way?

Of course. That is the recommended way-get comfortable with the technology by setting up a few access points, wireless-enable a few people, work out the kinks in the system, get familiar with the issues, and explore the possibilities. This can easily be done with low-end equipment and little investment. Eventually, you can get a full-blown system set up, possibly by professionals. Your original investment won’t be lost, since in most cases it can easily be integrated into the new system.

All it takes is a Rs 5,000 access point plugged into your conference room or reception area, to start with.

How do I tackle security?

You may not need to be severely paranoid about security for basic small network use. Most access points will give you two or three types of security, such as WEP encryption, and MAC-based filters. These are mostly adequate, but be aware that if you plug in Wi-Fi products into your company network, you do need to have basic security that is considered normal on the network anyway-such as strong passwords to your servers, and ensuring that your Windows PCs and laptops are not sharing folders and files.

In most cases, your existing network administrators will have enough knowledge to deal with security – if not, they can easily be trained in the additional aspects introduced by the WLAN. For a larger WLAn deployment, or for a business-critical network, you may need to get the help of a network professional.

How do I tackle security with minimal user harassment?

Using switches, extreme firewalls and a very clear understanding of what you are doing, you can ensure that people can “just use it” without too much setup time. However, understand clearly that the lower the “harassment”, the higher the risk involved. It is best you let a network administrator take a call on this.

If all you’re providing on your Wi-Fi network is Internet access in a small room, and the access point is not connected to a local area network or a server, you may even choose to disable security features like WEP, provided: (a) your laptops are protected as described above, and (b) you’re sure the signal is not leaking out of the room! In such a case you can actually reduce the access point’s signal power level, from its interface. In such a scenario, you are trusting users who are actually in the room (who might anyway have used wired access, too).

What are the pitfalls?

Speed, for a start. If you are used to a 100 Mbps wired network, or even a 10 Mbps switched network, be aware that you will experience lower speeds if you share an access point between multiple users. This does not matter for Internet connectivity, where your Net access bandwidth will be much lower anyway, but for accessing files on servers and PCs on your LAN, you’ll notice the difference.

Security, next. A WLAN can be accessed by anyone-including people you do not want to have on your network. Security is a key issue if you have a company LAN, with or without servers-if you aren’t careful, you might end up having your network compromised.

Next to this, issues you will face are signal strength-concrete walls, foliage and trees, etc. can all block the wireless radio signals, causing speeds of access to reduce, or access to be lost entirely. Correct placement of access points will handle this problem.

Be aware of the fact that mixing 802.11g (54 Mbps) and 802.11b (11 Mbps) clients can sometimes cause everyone’s access to drop to the lower 802.11b speeds. This is a technical shortcoming of current equipment. To avoid this, you can force your access points to work only in the faster 802.11g. This will, however, lock out any 802.11b clients.

How can I optimize the network?

Avoid setting very high expectations. This is probably the most effective optimization method. Many people expect their new WLAN to operate at wire-speeds-something that is simply not possible given the current wireless technologies.

Make sure that people who need heavy-data access (like access to databases, or where a lot of file transfer takes place) are connected to the wired networks, to avoid “flooding” of the available wireless network bandwidth.

Consider auditing usage (tools for this are available)-if you find a user “hogging” bandwidth, you may have to introduce some form of bandwidth management (which could be as simple as denying that user access to the WLAN).

Remember that security is a process, not a result. Therefore, it helps to keep checking things now and then-looking for unnatural traffic, etc. Also, disallow services that your users won’t be using (e.g. on an Internet-only access WLAN, disallow access to your corporate database and file servers), etc.

Prasanto Kumar Roy contributed to this article, which first appeared in the June 15 issue of Dataquest.

Tale of two PDAs

The Tungsten C was probably everything a business person would want. 64 MB of memory, a fantastic high-resolution colour screen, and two rather unusual things: no Graffiti writing area (and a small mini keyboard instead), and wireless (WiFi) connectivity. All this came with two “warts” – a high price (street price $500) and monophonic sound.

However, the lure of a wireless PDA is almost irresistible. Wireless hotspots were springing up all over the world – at a airports, in offices, at coffee shops, at home. Imagine being connected all the time, being able to pick up the latest news, the newest information, anything.

Reality check – while WiFi was most certainly the most important technology direction in the world at this point, it wasn’t really that easy to use and configure or even to find. PKR couldn’t find a WiFi hot spot at the airport on the way to the USA, and I knew from experience that it would take close to a year for such ease of connectivity to become reality in the places I would be moving in.

Would a WiFi-enabled PDA make sense here? Probably not. Had the unit included Bluetooth (another popular wireless method that was quickly replacing Infrared, and that existed in the previous Tungsten T model), one could have at least fallen back to GPRS via one’s cellphone, but no Bluetooth option existed for the Tungsten C.

The other factor was the way I used my PDA, which is much more personal in nature than people were expected to use this wireless-connected unit. For me, a PDA is an information store and an entertainment centre, rather than a gateway to live information and limited entertainment.

So while the Tungsten C looked very attractive to me on the surface, I decided to ask PKR to change plans, and pick up a Palm Zire 71 instead.

My latest “toy”

The Zire71 was everything I wanted in a personal digital assistant. More memory (well, 16 MB, of which 14 MB was usable), a fantastic high-resolution colour screen that was bright enough to be read totally comfortably in bright sunlight (or use as a room light in the night!), an expansion card port that allowed me to increase storage by using tiny Secure Digital cards (I got a 32 MB card with the unit, and immediately ordered myself another one sized 256 MB), full stereo MP3 playback capabilities (either through a small speaker at the rear of the unit, or through standard stereo headphones), the latest PalmOS 5.2 that fixed a huge number of issues from previous versions, and something I didn’t think I would need, but got anyway, since it was part of the unit – a camera.

I have been using digital cameras since 1999, and was under no illusions about the capabilities of the little thingy that was part of the Zire71. No flash, no zoom, no controls other than the shutter release. Maximum resolution of 640×480. I have seen toys with more features.

Except that I haven’t seen toys that travel with me wherever I went, ready for action when needed. No cursing about leaving the camera behind on this trip – whip out the PDA, and click.

Amazingly, while quality of pictures definitely didn’t approach the prosumer quality of my Kodak digital cameras, the pictures this little thing produced were much better than I had hoped to see. What had at first appeared to be a rather unnecessary gimmick, turned out to be a genuinely useful tool. I realized this as I bent over a paper document and used the camera to take a snap for later reading (a la James Bond), and when I used it to snap the contents of a whiteboard after a discussion.

The MP3 player part of it was a bit of a disappointment at first. The Zire71 can only play MP3 files (of which I own thousands) if stored on the expansion card. With only a small 32 MB card at hand, I found myself struggling to shoe-horn even 8 songs (or about 30 minutes worth music) into the PDA.

That explains the decision to order a larger storage card – based on the encoding rate I used, I would be able to carry between 2-4 hours of music with me on the larger card. And I could, of course, always acquire more cards – they are so small that they don’t take up any room at all.

Also, being a purchase from Europe (PKR picked it up at Heathrow Airport), the unit was subject to European volume-cap – which is considerably lower than stuff sold in the USA (other stereo equipment like portable CD, cassette and MP3 players are also subject to this cap, including the Apple iPod).

This means that the output of the unit was pretty low compared to what I was used to from other personal stereo devices. Palm did not included a pair of earphones matched to the Zire 71, which meant that I had to go through a series of different earphones before I found one that produced sufficient loudness and depth of sound.

This lead to a very memorable flame war on one of the mailing lists I was subscribed to, when I mentioned the low output, and all the Americans screamed that I didn’t know what I was talking about (at that time, none of the participants, including me, knew about the difference in output between European and American personal stereo devices).

Anyway, once I had a matching set of earphones, and MP3 playback software that could give output a bit of a pseudo-boost (the included RealPlayer software was OK, but it took Aeroplayer to really make this unit shine), I was more than happy with what I had.

The Screen

But the best thing (from my perspective) was the screen. As I said before – it was bright enough to be read in broad daylight, but then “bright” has different meanings for different things.

To understand this, look at the images you see if you shine a torch on a picture – you get to see details, but what you really see is a lot of light, most of it wasted unless you really get the right angle.

Now imagine the picture itself being luminous. Imagine a flat sheet of paper in front of you that is sheer white and glowing bright. Any details on this paper are going to be gloriously bright, colourful and easy to see and read.

That is the difference between the “colour” screens most PDAs were offering at that time, and the screen of the Zire 71. While most PDA screens were LCDs with light shining on them, the Zire 71 screen was (in effect) shining on its own – like the screen of a standard CRT-based PC monitor.

So here we are

So here we are. As I sit writing these words (in September 2003), the Zire 71 has been everything that I expect of a PDA.

Since March, I have read countless books on it (thanks to the great screen, that is no longer a pain even at night), played back innumerable MP3s, played some really amazing full-colour, high resolution games, had my behind paddled by a rather vicious robot-opponent at Monopoly and Scrabble, sucked down megabytes of news and information everyday via Avantgo, and taken photos that I wouldn’t have expected to capture.

My little piece of technological miracle that travels everywhere with me has more than paid for itself, and I watched with glee as more and more PalmOS based devices started hitting the market – including watches, game consoles, GPS devices, phones and of course more and more PDAs.

That brings to an end a rather lengthy article, and I hope you have enjoyed this Personal Digital Adventure of mine. Expect more PDA-related articles soon – I have so much to tell you about how I use my PDA, what applications I use, what situations I have found myself in where the PDA came to my rescue, and more.

Maybe, just maybe, this set of articles will convince you to start using a PDA as well?

Ramming an entire Windows or Linux desktop into a small form factor doesn’t improve the user experience in any way. PalmOS was designed to deal with issues that were never on anyone’s radar when designing a desktop operating system.

Innovation

Not that this would try and stop people from trying to “convert” me to something else. The number of debates I have had with friends about their perceptions of a good PDA operating system is literally uncountable.

Amazingly enough, while many people would argue that it made more sense to have a Windows based PDA instead of a “non-standard” OS like PalmOS, the bitter irony was that none of these debaters ever acquired a PDA of their own. The only ones who came close to making a winning argument for a switch all used PalmOS based units themselves.

In any case, I have always been someone who believed in choice and trying out new things (I use Linux by choice on my desktops and notebooks), and having used a PDA for so long, I greatly appreciated the simplicity that PalmOS and applications built on it offered me, so there was little chance of my throwing away all that experience for something else.

Alternatives

I did spend a lot of time examining the alternatives. I played with various different PDAs, running different operating systems. I found that while most PDAs had now grown to the provide the kind of flexibility that PalmOS based units offered, the actual availability of choices was limited when it came to software. In most cases, I found that Windows CE (or PocketPC) based units tended to try and replicate the functionality of a standard Digital Diary, with a few desktop applications thrown in. Sure, you could now get units that could play MP3 files, or even show video clips, but that was about it when it came to innovation.

The real innovation (from my perspective) was happening on my own familiar home ground – under PalmOS.

With the advent of Sony in the PDA market, things had begun changing rapidly for the PalmOS world. Sony produced consumer-grade PDAs running PalmOS with features not seen in any other PDA before them, such as cameras, MP3 players, virtual writing areas (instead of the dedicated and space hogging Graffiti area), higher resolutions, better colours and great pricing.
Palm was falling behind, and their offerings throughout 2002 were meagre compared to what Sony was offering.

Phase III

This was the state of affairs in February 2003 when I found myself on a lookout for a new PDA. Nothing really attracted me, other than the latest Sony models.
However, I wasn’t too keen on changing brands (albeit with the same software platform) – I had grown into the PDA world with Palm models, and along with the usability factor, the brand loyalty was a big factor as well.
End March 2003, my Palm Vx finally died, and I found myself frantically SMSing my friend Prasanto Kumar Roy (PKR), who was about to go for a short trip to the USA, to pick up something for me.

“Sure”, he said. “What?”

PKR is himself a Palm Vx user for almost as long as I have been, and understood the issues involved. He was quite possibly the best person to take a call on this for me, and letting him take an autonomous choice in the matter on my behalf was probably the safest bet I could lay down.

At which point Palm went and dramatically changed the stakes.

(Continued in Part 4)

First of all, I subscribed to about almost 2 MB of channels from Avantgo. The service itself was just growing, and every day new stuff could be found, so you can imagine that there quite a few changes in my lineup over the next few months as I settled on what I could call my steady set of channels. These included BBC News, Reuters News, Slashdot.org, PalmInfoCenter.com, CNET News.com, Beyond 2000, and quite a few entertainment and technology channels.

Several times a day, whenever I had a few minutes, I would place my PDA in its cradle, and hotsync, automatically backing up any new data that I had acquired since the last sync, and downloading the latest news updates via Avantgo.

By now, PDAs were becoming quite common all around Microsoft’s WinCE (PocketPC) based PDAs had also started making their appearance, but the cost factor continued to keep PDAs out of most peoples hands.

Therefore it was quite common to see a lot of people craning over their seats on flights to have a look what I was doing there with that little thing in my hand. I often found myself explaining to both passengers and crew what the PDA could do, and would show them captured websites, news, books, games, information, etc.

Input!

One thing that I found very amusing was the fascination people held for the way I input data into the PDA.

The Palm PDAs use a pseudo-handwriting method called Graffiti that allowed me to quickly write characters on the a specially marked area of the PDA, which would be recognised by the PDA and stored as the correct alphabets, signs and numbers. This comes completely natural to me, and I had grown quite adept at it, being able to write entire articles and reports quickly and neatly that way. But for some reason, this completely natural way of writing was for most people something alien!

In 2001, I acquired a foldable keyboard for the Palm Vx that was literally no bigger than the PDA itself when in folded state, but expanded into a full-size keyboard when unfolded, allowing me to type really fast. Strangely enough, most people didn’t bat an eyelid when I did that in an airplane making me wonder what kind of cybernetic rules of engagement were at play here when it came to peoples perceptions of what is normal.

Communication

In the early years of using a PDA, I used to carry a small pocket modem with me that would allow me to connect my PDA to the Internet to pick up new stuff. However over the years, I found that the need for this grew less and less.
The increased capacity of the PDA is was using allowed me to connect less frequently and pick up more material than I could run out of on flights and sometimes even entire trips. The capture-and-read-offline way of dealing with information was a runaway success for me, and allowed me access to more non-transient information than I could have asked for.

Did that mean that actual “always-on” online connectivity was something I could do without? Not really. But wireless networking was just maturing, Indian service providers were just beginning to look at data services such as GPRS (and botching up the concept really badly), so I was in no real hurry to “get online” via my cell phone (though that was always possible) or WiFi. There was a time for all that, but it hadn’t yet come.

This was fairly ironic. I am a networking and data communication consultant, and here I was actually thriving off non-connectivity!

Dilemma

In early 2003, my faithful Palm Vx started flaking out. I frequently had complete hard resets, losing all data, and the unit’s battery started misbehaving. It was definitely time for a new PDA.

The question was – which?

To understand my dilemma, one needs to look at the PDA scene at that time.

(Continued in Part 3)

This makes it the perfect time to tell my readers how I got into the “PDA” habit.

Electronic Diaries

I was introduced to the concept of “Electronic Diaries” way back in the early 1990s, when I picked up a Casio Digital Diary to track the lengthening list of telephone numbers and other contact information that I was accumulating during my work and my speaking tours.

My purchase decision wasn’t based on availability (Digital diaries had been around for quite a while), but connectivity – the unit I picked up had an option to copy data to and from our PCs. This was mission critical for me – diaries get lost or stolen, lose power or otherwise tend to become unavailable, and my data was (and continues to be) important to me.

Convenience

Using this diary was convenient, but backing it up was not. It used a slow serial connection, with cables that had proprietary connectors, and software that either wasn’t available or simply wouldn’t work. I finally managed to get a combination of things going (including a cable made for me by my friend Babu Kalakrishnan, software I downloaded from CompuServe, lots of R&D with port speeds and data formats), but it sure wasn’t very intuitive.

But there was another factor that I didn’t enjoy – these gadgets were really lifeless. Fixed function devices like digital diaries tend to be just that – no surprises, no change, nothing new. You have your basic telephone numbers/calculator/memos/world clock/appointment functions, and that was it.

Very easy to get bored with, and I did. While I continued to use my digital diary for several years, it clearly wasn’t meant to be an integral part of my life.

Peter’s Palm

One day, I was sitting with my friend Peter de Jong, when he whipped out his latest gadget acquisition – a US Robotics Palm Pilot, and proceeded to show me what it could do.

I was totally unimpressed. It was just another digital diary, albeit with a fancier interface.

What got my attention was when he showed me what came with it – a “cradle” that you plugged into your PC’s serial port. You then placed the Palm Pilot into the cradle, hit the “Hotsync” button, and in a matter of moments, the PC and the Palm Pilot synchronized their data (address lists, phone numbers, appointments, etc. – ho hum!).

No twiddling, no fiddling – everything just worked.

The best part was – if the Palm Pilot now at any time lost its data (like when the non-rechargeable batteries inevitably died), you only needed to hotsync again, and all your data was back in place.

Magic! This was how things were supposed to work!

However, Peter still couldn’t get me excited enough to take the plunge and buy one myself. This whole PDA business still looked like a fancy electronic diary to me. I liked to think that my life was more than a fixed function.

Then Peter installed a small program on the Palm Pilot. And probably changed my life.

For good.

Suddenly, this PDA business took on a whole new perspective for me. This wasn’t a fixed function device – it could be expanded, extended, made more useful, more entertaining, more me.

Getting PDA’d

Over the next few months, I spent a considerable amount of time researching this whole palm Pilot business. By then, 3COM had taken over the manufacture of the Palm Pilot with its acquisition of US Robotics, and had now re-branded the unit, and started focusing on both the connectivity as well as the expandability.

Literally thousands of extremely useful little programs started appearing on bulletin boards, on the Internet, on CompuServe and elsewhere, and there was even an emulator program available for your PC that allowed you to run a simulated Palm Pilot on your PC desktop, so you could try out various things without spending big moolah.

One obstacle that stood between my own PDA and me was of course that I lived in India, where such things simply weren’t available. However, that’s what friends are for, and on one home-trip abroad, Peter purchased and carried in my very own Palm III.

I was enthralled.

My First PDA

My first PDA (the Palm III) was a basic 2 MB RAM unit, with a 160×160 monochrome display. Still no rechargeable batteries (and I proceeded to spend a fortune over the next year and a half on batteries!), but it was a real PDA, and for the first time I had something other than my clunky notebook to work with while traveling, sitting at my desk or simply lying flat in bed.

The very first thing that I got myself was games. There was no shortage of them on the Internet, and while they weren’t exactly Nintendo quality (lack of colour does tend to be a downer there), they could keep me engrossed long periods of time. And if I ever got bored well, I simply installed another game.

It wasn’t that I could just do one thing at a time on the PDA, either. Like a little PC, I could store multiple programs on the unit, and call up any at will and use it.

Another extremely useful function was documents. With the addition of a simple, standard text reader program, I could install entire books on the PDA, which I could read or refer to whenever I wanted to. For a maniac reader like me (I read anything including the publisher information at the end of the newspaper, or the manufacturer info on a box of thumbtacks) this was sheer heaven. No more carrying around fat books one visit to the Project Gutenberg site would get me enough free (and totally legal) reading matter for weeks together. And I could also capture entire web-pages and store them on the PDA for later reference.

By now, the old Casio Digital Diary had been relegated to the junkyard after one final backup session.

The PDA had truly taken over my world.

By the end of the 1990s, I was effectively helpless without my trusty PDA I would not leave home without my spectacles, cellular phone or Palm III. Nothing else mattered. Period.

Growing Pains

But things were getting tight. Memory capacity of the Palm III was limited to 2 MB, and even though some unbelievable hacks allowed me to actually extend the memory by another MB (by storing some programs in the units unused Flash ROM), I found myself running out of space more often than I liked. Also, the ever-present battery problems were quite irking.

I needed something new, but couldn’t really bring myself to commit to another purchase.

Then two things happened in quick succession that changed that perspective.
The first was my discovery of a service called Avantgo that allowed me to subscribe to entire PDA-formatted websites (news, entertainment, etc.) and download all of them in one go. In a matter of minutes, I would have the latest news from CNN, BBC, News.com, Slashdot and other sites on my Palm, ready for offline-reading whenever I had the time.

But Avantgo stuff needed space (megabytes) – space that the Palm III didn’t have.

The second thing was that a set of batteries leaked, wrecking the insides of the Palm III.

A client of mine was traveling abroad when the latter event happened, and I immediately fired of an email, asking her to pick up a new Palm Vx at Singapore airport something she thankfully managed to do.

A few days, later, I had before me my brand new Palm Vx – sleek, slim, rechargeable battery that charged automatically every time I placed the unit in the cradle to hotsync, great screen (though still monochrome, but much clearer), much faster and snappier performance and most important of all
EIGHT MB of memory (plus another 700 odd KB in Flash ROM).

Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

(Continued in Part 2)

The single most important technology in this case is the wireless network – WiFi for the initiated – an 802.11b based network that lets me stay connected to my LAN and the Internet no matter where I am on the premises.

Which, in this case, is my garden, where I sit with my notebook in my lap, writing these words, while at the same time using an Instant Messenger to stay in touch with people, keeping an eye on incoming email, and browsing the web for background information that I need.

A year ago, this would have sounded like a utopian dream. Today, this isn’t just stark reality – it is commodity reality.

Solutions v/s Commodities

When I first decided to look into a wireless network for the home earlier this year, I did so with the usual misconceptions – probably too expensive, hard to justify, not really available in India, etc.

What I found was an eye opener.

There are two ways of approaching setting up a wireless network today – and they are really at opposite ends of the cost and benefits spectrum.

The Solution Approach

One approach, considered by many large organizations, is the “solution” approach.

With this approach, you essentially field out the whole thing to a vendor, who will quote for a solution that includes components, setup costs and possibly maintenance. The rationale, as presented by most vendors, is that they have to do a site survey, design the system, implement it, tune the components, take into account expansion, etc.

Sticker shock is an inevitable result of this approach, and many a decision maker will decide to shelve the whole thing at that stage. And if the price of the solution doesn’t scare her away, the implied complexity of the setup will.

The Commodity Approach

With this approach, the decision maker takes into account the commodity nature of today’s wireless components, buys essential off-the-shelf components, gives it to her Information Systems (IS) people to fool around with for a few days, and then sees it deployed to maximum benefit within days.

Or she might just decide to do it herself.

All that at a low cost, very little time-investment, almost negligible learning curve, and everyone learns something new in the process. And it is actually fun!

Very clearly, the two approaches are radically different, and I’d be lying that the second approach is always better than the first.

However, it does give a new perspective to things – that there are feasible alternatives.

Which route do I take?

Costs aside, one needs to consider what you are trying to achieve going wireless today. What’s your deployment need? Are you replacing an existing wired network? Or are you just extending one? Are you trying to bridge two physically separated LANs? Who is the target user – heavy-duty File&Print users or lightweight Internet and mail access executives? Are you wireless-enabling a corporate LAN or a SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) setup?

Scary questions? Not really.

Here is an easy rule-of-thumb you can follow to assess your need – if you need to

• enable executives with wireless Internet (web/mail/IM) access via your existing LAN (which is connected to the Internet)
• setup a SOHO network to cater to your Internet-access requirements

then you can do so with commodity wireless equipment. It doesn’t even have to be high-end equipment, or the fastest on the planet. It just needs to be standards compliant (most available equipment is) and available.If you are looking at heavy duty data transfer (File&Print, database replications, etc.), bridging two LANs, or replacing an entire wired network for a large company, you would need to look at a professionally designed solution.

There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

Benefits of being wireless

I am not going to inundate you with the benefits of wireless networking – you wouldn’t be reading this article if you weren’t already aware of them, and today you cannot throw a stone without hitting a “Benefits of Wireless Networks” article.

Instead, let me illustrate to you just how simple it is to get a wireless network going, and what the immediate results are. I will look at two cases – both of my own stable: my home/office setup, where I and my family are the only users, and my office, where 10 users use an existing wired LAN, and I needed to extend it.

The Small Office/Home Office Setup

OK, this was so simple my ears went red.

I checked the market for prices, and then picked up a low cost SOHO Wireless Internet Gateway Router for about Rs.15,000 plus taxes. (a few months later, costs dropped to Rs.10,000 and lower, as all commodity electronics do).

When it was delivered, I unpacked it, and switched it on. No, I did not read the manual. I plugged it in and switched it on. Then I had a look at what connections it had. I couldn’t really go wrong – one said “WAN” (i.e. the Internet), the other said “PC/LAN”. A supplied cable was plugged into the PC/LAN port, and the other end went into my daughter’s PC’s LAN card. Then I plugged in my ISP’s cable into the WAN port.

OK, at this point I did have to refer to the manual to find out what to do next. No software needed to be installed – I just had to point my browser at an address, which I did.

Voila, up came a configuration wizard, which asked me some very simple questions – I just clicked my way through accepting the defaults. Then I switched on my notebook (which has a built-in wireless card, as most modern notebooks do).

And I was connected wirelessly, and was able to browse the Internet, check my mail, and chat shamelessly with my friends, gloating about my “achievement” (which got a bored “ho hum, you too? What took you so long?” response out of most of them).

That was really all it took. The whole process took about 5 minutes. It took longer to arrange a chair, table and some iced tea in the garden.

Sure, there is fine-tuning you can do (secure the network, for example) but to get me going, this was all it took.

A typical SOHO setup does not require much in terms of bandwidth. The typical Wireless Network runs at 11 mbps (that’s mega BITS per second), being the most common wireless standard (802.11b) until yesterday. Today, the recently blessed 802.11g standard is the hot item on the market at 54 mbps.

Consider that in most cases, you cable/DSL Internet connection isn’t going to be much faster than 64 or 128 kbps, even 11 mbps should see you through until next year.

It is rare that I would have to share files with my daughter’s home PC, but if I do want to do so, I can.

The setup I have described services my connectivity needs anywhere in the compound and anywhere in the building (ground floor, first floor and basement).

The Office Setup

My office has ten users using a variety of network resources, which include file&print, Internet access, database queries, remote installs, etc. The office network is a professionally setup 100 mbps wired (CAT5) network, utilizing a switch. The Internet connectivity (a very functional BSNL DIAS connection) plugs into a gateway server that also runs the firewall, and makes available Internet connectivity to everyone on the LAN.

My need was to add wireless functionality to the LAN so that I could move around with my notebook for meetings, and for visiting clients to be able to access the Internet from anywhere in the office. While File&Print functionality was an occasional need, my bandwidth requirements were limited.

The office isn’t very big, so I decided to emulate my home setup. The only difference was really that I didn’t need the functionality of a router and DHCP server, since my LAN already provided all these. In short, I just needed an Access Point that bridged the wireless network with the wired office LAN.

So I checked the market for available Access Points without router functionality, and was in for a bit of a shock – prices started at Rs.25,000 and went up from there!

At first I felt that I was being subjected to a rip-off – my wireless router at home with far more functionality was priced almost half of what I was being offered here.

It turns out that there is a difference, though a subtle one. The Access Points I was being offered were the “sticker shock included” Enterprise Access Points, that can handle a lot more connections and traffic than the SOHO-style routers.

But that was not really something I needed in my small office, where I already have full Internet access functionality on my LAN. So I just picked up another wireless router, turned off all the router and DHCP functionality (which turned it into an Access Point without Internet capabilities), and plugged it into the LAN’s switch. Seconds later, my notebook DHCP’d off the office server wirelessly, and I was on, browsing the Intranet and Internet, collecting my email, conferring with my colleagues using Instant Messengers, etc. any visitor to the office is given a temporary access key/account, and they are on in a minute as well.

Eventually, we found that we could replace the Access Point functionality with an even cheaper wireless card in the server, configured to act as an Access Point, but that is going too deep into things for this article.

The Client Side of Things

Wireless networks are a boon for mobile users, and recognizing this, most new notebooks coming out in the market have wireless connectivity built into the machine. If you are buying a new notebook, make sure to specify that you want built-in WiFi connectivity, saving you the trouble of buying and maintaining a separate PCMCIA wireless network card. Many new notebooks offer 802.11g wireless functionality (see “The Alphabet Soup”, below), and that is preferred over the older 802.11b, so if you have a choice, go for 802.11g.

If you need to add wireless connectivity to an existing notebook, options are plenty, and prices are falling. A typical PCMCIA wireless network card costs about $40 (about Rs.1,800-2,000) in the USA, but in India, given duties and the usual markups, you are looking at a price tag of about Rs.6,000 at the time of writing.

Things start getting expensive if you are looking at adding wireless connectivity to a desktop PC. Currently, a PCI (not PCMCIA) wireless card starts at Rs.10,000 and goes up from there. However, there are clear indications that this is going to change drastically in the downward direction over the next month or so.

Ironically, you may still be dealing with a PCMCIA card – most wireless PCI solutions are actually the same old PCMCIA wireless cards, with a PCMCIA->PCI adaptor.

And here comes the big question – why would you want to wireless-enable a desktop PC at all? After all, it is not likely to move from where it is installed.

That’s a good question, and the answer is probably that you needn’t think wireless for desktop PCs at all if you have an existing wired network. It just does not make sense.

There could be exceptions, of course, but in most cases, it just isn’t worth the trouble if you have an existing wired network.

The Alphabet Soup

Throughout the article I have thrown around terms like 802.11b, 802.11g, etc. A likely question you would have is – which one is the right one for me?

The answer is so simple that you’ll laugh – you may not really have a choice.

802.11b was the wireless standard for several years. Running at 11 mbps shared bandwidth (this means that all users attached to the wireless access point/router will share a total of 11 mbps) in the free-to-use 2.4 GHz frequency range, it provides nice, stable connectivity, and is great for Internet connectivity and low-volume connectivity, or when you have few users on one network.

But as data requirements go up, so does the need for speed.

For a while, the 802.11a standard seemed like it was the way to go – at 54 mbps, it was four times faster (in theory) than 802.11b. But it also had one major issue – inability to co-exist with existing 802.11b infrastructure, the need to work in the 5 GHz radio frequency range (which is not open for use everywhere, and costs Rs.18,000 per license in India) and its shorter range.

Today, the 802.11g standard has been ratified (in June 2003) by the IEEE, and at 54 mbps over 2.4 GHz, with its ability to cater to both 802.11b (11 mbps) and 802.11g (54 mbps) clients, it is effectively the only way to fly.

“Hold on” I can hear you say, “802.11g products have been available since last year!”

That’s true, but they were all using a draft standard, which eventually led to the ratified 802.11g standard. There is virtually no difference between the draft standard and the final standard, and whatever differences there were, were quickly ironed out with a firmware upgrade.

The major advantage to you, as a consumer, is that the early adoption of 802.11g products has led to a tremendous drop of prices, and today 802.11g products are available at the same price (in the USA and Europe) as 802.11b products were till last month. A SOHO router of the type I bought months ago, but using 802.11g, now costs about $100 – the same as the older 802.11b equipment.

So what standard should I go in for?

Today, that question may still be valid.

If you have a price advantage (and can get a SOHO 11 mbps 802.11b router for at least 30% lower price than a 54 mbps 802.11g router), and if your application is a SOHO setup, then by all means go for it.

But in all other cases go for 802.11g equipment – it makes no financial or logical sense to go in for the older standard, given that 802.11g prices are now at the same level as the 802.11b equipment. Also, most manufacturers will probably phase out their older 802.11b line anyway (they may deny this now, but let’s consider market realities here).

For some time, a window of opportunity may exist for acquiring legacy 802.11b equipment at very low prices as the manufacturers start clearing their inventories of this kind of equipment. This is excellent value for SOHO setups, which do not need high throughputs.

There are a few products that used a proprietary extension of the 802.11b standard to achieve higher speeds (up to 22 mbps). These cannot inter-operate with 802.11g equipment at those enhanced speeds unless the 802.11g equipment is also from the same vendor and also supports the proprietary protocol. With all other manufacturer’s equipment (and even the same manufacturer’s equipment, if it doesn’t not support the proprietary protocol), they will inter-operate with 802.11g equipment only at the slower 11 mbps 802.11b standard.

And these proprietary protocols will probably go away pretty soon as well (as evidenced by most manufacturer’s new product specs).

If you have absolutely no choice other than a proprietary protocol and standard 802.11b equipment, go for the latter, unless there is no price difference, and as long as you understand that the proprietary protocols will not work at those enhanced speeds with other equipment.

What did you leave out?

Lots. I skimmed over security, for example.

Wireless networks, by their very nature, are less secure than wired networks, but how badly you are affected by this depends on your application:

If you are only using the wireless network to access the Internet, you will probably not have to bother too much about this, since you do not have to protect an entire corporate network, but the need for security does exist, and is best handled using personal firewalls. Basic encryption and MAC-level grant/deny lists offered by any wireless access point or router will dissuade most casual freeloaders from hopping onto your network and using your bandwidth.

However, if the wireless network allows access to your corporate network, you may want to give this some more thought. Securing the corporate wireless network is a non-trivial task, but it isn’t very difficult either – it uses concepts most network administrators are already familiar with and using today, such as Virtual Private Networks, routing and firewalls.

I’ll cover these issues in a future article.

I have assumed cable or DSL kind of connectivity to the Internet, not modem-based dialup connectivity, throughout this article.

While not impossible, it is not really a situation commonly found in the target setups we are considering. If you are using a modem-based dialup connection, then you would probably enable Internet Connection Sharing ICS) on your PC, and allow wireless clients to share the connection via an access point or peer-to-peer wireless connection, rather than using a dedicated router.

Winding up

Setting up a wireless network these days is no black art – if you can use a PC, you can set up a little wireless network. As your needs become more complex, you may need to plan a bit more and maybe get in some professionals to set things up for you, but if you have an existing network team in your organization, handling an existing wired network, you really do not have to.

And costs are way down – I expect that within months, you should be able to get a SOHO wireless router for around Rs.5,000-8,000, i.e. the cost of a fancy colour printer, and the cost of wireless network cards will drop to around Rs.2,000 – if you need them at all, given that most notebooks will already have them built-in. This is especially true for all the new Centrino based notebooks, which will come with WiFi connectivity built-in in most cases (though not necessarily 802.11g based, since the current Centrino products are 802.11b based).

Providing wireless connectivity to executives in their offices and conference rooms will instantly raise productivity, and they will know whom to thank. Even a simple access point plugged into the wall-mounted wired socket of your LAN in a conference room would instantly show results.

I hope that this article helped to demystify the concept of wireless networking, and to encourage you to give it a try, because it is really affordable, easy to set up, and definitely useful.

A shorter version of this article appeared in the 1-July-2003 issue of Dataquest