comm_archive's blog

I just bought a NOKIA E61 in Stockholm (yeah, for testing, right?) and am really impressed with it. As often happens, and despite attestations to the contrary, Apple is lagging behind in offering iSync support for this brand new device.

No bother, I fixed it.

To sync up a NOKIA E61 with a Mac you need to add the text from this .TXT file to the file:

MetaClasses.plist

...which is located in directory:

Applications: iSync.app: Contents: PlugIns: ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice: Contents: PlugIns: PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin: Contents: Resources

Depending upon how you log in to your Mac, you may need to go to the command line and use sudo and/or emacs to edit the file. Me? I use BBEdit. It doesn't suck.

Of course, please don't hold EQO or me responsible for what happens if you mess this up. We're just trying to be helpful.

Skype's announcement today that they're making North American calling free means that it'll be free for users of EQO (and Skype) to take advantage of calling over the Skype network from their mobile phones. This is obviously great for us, but kinda sucks if you're .. oh, I dunno.. VONAGE.

It's not clear to me how Skype plans to monitor and enforce their stipulation that callers and the destination numbers must both be in North America. I just successfully made a free call to Canada from Stockholm, for example, where I am attending Spring VON Europe. I also changed the country in my Skype Profile to TUVALU (hey, I like watching .tv) and tried, from Stockholm, to call to California. Again, this worked without billing me.

So, is it possible that Skype launched this before they've figured out how to restrict it?

Despite all logic to the contrary (and the ramblings of yours truly) the hype surrounding the impending replacement of the global carrier wireless network by WiFi is approaching hysteria.

The success of WiFi as a replacement, or even a successful augmentation to, the existing mobile voice network is hinged on three things:

1) Battery Life -- mobile phones don't pack enough oomph to do WiFi which, strangely enough, wasn't really designed with mobile devices in mind. Fixing this will likely require bending the laws of physics but if it works we'll all be driving electric cars that go 400km on a 3-hour charge.

2) Ubiquitous Availability -- WiFi compromises signal propagation for speed... it's built into the design. Getting WiFi through walls, past metal objects, and beyond 50 feet from the radio isn't really that easy. Doing it in a mesh is even harder, and doing it in areas where every Tom, Dick, and Harry already has their own LinkSys gateway is damned near impossible.

Call me crazy, but the last thing on earth that I need is a custom ring tone on my desktop Skype client.

Before you rule me out as a fuddy-duddy I will point out that the single-most important selection criteria of the last three mobile phones I have purchased was customizable ring tones using MP3 or WAV formats.

I use a modified version of the Jetsons' doorbell sound as my ring tone (I am soooo cool) which I edited and pre-processed in Cakewalk's SONAR and uploaded via my PowerBook's BlueTooth connection. I presently use a Sony-Ericsson W800i, purchased last summer, and have ordered the new Motorola Q.

Part of me has to cop to enjoying the looks of bewilderment and bemusement I receive when my pocket lights up orange and the sound of 1960s-era high-tech pierces the air of any room. It's my own little 4.3 second irony-laden assault on our notions of modernity and progress from way back in the 20th century. It makes me laugh. Inside. Really. And others have been known to giggle.

It's not that we're short-term thinkers here at EQO, but when we set out on this great VC-funded adventure we didn't want to sit on our hands and wait for the communications industry to catch up with our vision by deploying IMS networks and Federating with one another. All of this to me implies a lot of hand-holding and the smoking of many peace pipes -- neither of which is common behaviour in telecom.

We're practical guys. We're a fixed-mobile convergence solution for the real world. In a lot of ways we are FMC 0.5 ... and once we move from our beta phase we'll be ready to enable both wireless carriers AND online communities to work together, without necessarily having to .. uh .. work together. In that sense, our platform is much like IMS without requiring anyone to endorse IMS itself.

As you folks likely read in the media, we had a very successful trip to San Jose Last week.

But one thing in particular was palpable at last week's VON conference. As Stuart Henshall pointed out (and Jeff responded), there was no Skype presence at Spring VON in San Jose, which is by far the pre-eminent conference in the arena.

VON would have been a great place for Skype to convene with developers like us: They were all there, from Skype Phone handset manufacturers and hardware vendors to software / network players like us. I ran into James Bilefield, Skype VP Business Development, but Skype were notably absent from the Speakers' List.

There are really a couple of fundamental issues here (that I know about):

1) Much has been made of Niklas Zennstrom's pending (ahem) legal issues with the RIAA vis-a-vis his Kazaa experience. The rumour is that the RIAA have convinced the US Government to issue an arrest warrant against Friis and Zennstrom, which of course would have detrimental effects upon his entry to the USA. Note that I am conveying this rumour though I can find no such documentation as to its veracity.

As of this morning we've just released an update to the EQO Beta that allows for both Skype™ calling *and* Instant Messaging from your mobile phone. This is an exciting feature that will definitely get the community excited.

Our dev and test teams, after pulling an all-nighter (thanks team!), are presently napping. We're quite ready for the deluge and it's exciting to see all the interest that this feature has garnered. We've also expanded handset support to more than 40 phones!

The EQO Mobile Internet Phone Service for Skype™ is a J2ME-based application that rides on your mobile phone handset and lets you use GPRS to make and receive calls and instant messages on your phone, and track the status of your Skype™ buddies in realtime.

We think this is a cool service and we're proud to keep bringing you improvements.

Thanks also to our thousands of Alpha and Beta testers who are also helping to improve our software immeasurably through your enthusiastic and supportive feedback.

-Ian.

PS - We've received some great early coverage from conversations with Rhonda Ascierto, Om Malik, and Bill machrone.

EQO will be attending Spring VON 2006 in San Jose, CA next week. Colin Quon, EQO's CTO, has also been invited to present at VON on Thursday, March 16th @ 11:45 - 12:45. The title of the Breakout Session is "The Role of IMS and FMC". Colin is one of the industry's acknowledged experts in the field of IMS based on his work @ Nortel and TELOS.

Also, you'll see another exciting announcement from EQO during that week. We look forward to sharing with everyone the fruit of our recent development efforts.

-Ian.

As Chris Reported earlier, we added support for nine more mobile phones this afternoon. This includes the Sony-Ericsson K700 line as well as a number of popular Nokia Series 40 and Series 60 phones including the 6111, 6165, 6265, 6265i, 6270, 6280, 7370.

This ability to port our application rapidly across other platforms is the main benefit of building our software in J2ME. Keep watching this blog and the forums for new details.

-Ian. (Technorati Profile)

Bill Tam, CEO of EQO, was on the CBC the other day talking about EQO (audio here).. It's a good demonstration of the notion that, for the uninitiated, VoIP is a dirty word. It's not that it isn't a powerful technology, but the stay-at-homes and most of the rest of us have been conditioned to think of the dangers of the misdirected 911 call when we hear the word "VoIP". In many respects this is because the industry didn't do a good job of containing these fears at the onset (blame Vonage). After all, the mobile carriers have never done a very good job at handling 911 location data, still don't, and regulators haven't exactly held their feet to the fire.

One of the great things about EQO is that it doesn't matter whether or not we use VoIP. In keeping people connected to online communities, we'd use string and plastic cups if it was most appropriate. If this industry is to surmount this kind of attack (hint: it comes when we say "cheap long distance" or "VoIP") then we need to sell based on features... things that improve how people communicate. EQO is doing that but the mainstream media don't always pick up on that because it's more interesting to them to report on the evil defilers of E911 data.