Telcos Fail to Capitalize on Mobile Web 2.0, According to New Research By Arthur D. Little
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Telecoms companies are failing to make the most of the growing  popularity of the online information-sharing services of "Web 2.0",  according to new research 'Web re-loaded:  Driving convergence in the real world.' by  global consultancy Arthur D. Little.
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Also: Treo troubles trigger Palm plunge. Read these stories and more from around the Web at News.com Extra.
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By SHARON WARD  A RESEARCHER at Edinburgh University is hoping to raise GBP 600,000 in venture-capital funding and EU grants to develop the technology for a new type of information service for mobile phone users.
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.
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Just don't forget basic IT principles Mobile workshop Our recent wireless workshop has demonstrated yet again that the genuine experts in any area are the people out there doing it for real. Indeed, we saw a number of examples of pragmatic ânon trendyâ opinions coming back from experienced Reg Readers that donât necessarily tally with some of the more idealistic views we often hear from the pundits and the press (Reg journalists excluded, of course).â¦
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New study points out the potential hazards of long-term mobile phone use.
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Somehow the search engine defies Wall Street and becomes even more profitable. Also: Study shows that cell phones make us drive like senior citizens & hellip;.  Smartphones get new software and become closer to PDA's & hellip;. and more.
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Flaw in the way the Net phone software handles Web links could enable an attacker to launch arbitrary code on some Macs.
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One reason that mobile users don&#39;t access more content from a mobile phone, like video clips, is because finding content is cumbersome -- but that should change in the future with intelligent network services, said one expert speaking on a panel at the Consumer Electronics Show.Currently, smartphone users may not be accessing as much content or online services as they&#39;d like because it&#39;s difficult to do so. &quot;If to discover content you have to type in a URL, it&#39;s never going to happen,&quot; said Muzibul Khan, vice president of product management and engineering at Samsung Telecommunications America.He suggests that using voice commands is the best way to look for content from a mobile phone. &quot;Voice is the most natural medium,&quot; he said.But Intrinsyc&#39;s CEO thinks that even voice command technology is rooted in the past. &quot;We&#39;re talking about a paradigm for Web searching that was built for the PC,&quot; said Glenda Dorchak, who is also chairman of Intrinsyc.While there may be a transitional period in the near future when voice or other improved search techniques are used for content discovery on mobile handsets, ultimately a more intelligent system will prevail, she said. In the future, a context-aware, server-driven system will emerge, where the network will forward relevant and useful content to users. The type of content that users will get will depend on their location and other preferences that they&#39;ve set.Key to that vision will be multiple radios in mobile devices working together. She imagines a time when a phone might have Wi-Fi, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), GPS (Global Positioning System), Bluetooth, satellite and WiMax, each finding and delivering information to end-users, possibly simultaneously. The phones will be smart enough to pick the most appropriate network for delivering the content, she said.But running that many radios in a single device consumes power and requires sophisticated algorithms, so she suggests a few years will pass before it happens. However, the technology already exists to support part of that vision, such as converged cellular and Wi-Fi offerings that roam between the networks without dropping voice calls.In the meantime, operators and content providers are working to figure out exactly how to deliver video to users now. The Tivo generation wants to be able to choose what they want to watch and when, said Jeff Finkelstein, multimedia product manager for Palm. &quot;They don&#39;t want to wait for the headline news to start on the hour,&quot; he said.However, companies building mobile broadcast TV networks around the world like DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld) would likely disagree.Easier sharing capabilities could boost mobile video use too. For about the past year and a half, statistics about how much video people watch online from their PCs haven&#39;t changed much, said Frank Barbieri, CEO of Transpera, a company that provides technology behind mobile video services. &quot;Maybe in five years the phone could surpass the Web in terms of video snacking,&quot; he said.
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[&lt;a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/financial/qualcomm.html"&gt;Qualcomm&lt;/a&gt;] has single-mindedly focused on its patented Code Division Multiple Access cellular technology, which is only now starting to bring useable wireless data links to mobile enterprise users.
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(InfoWorld) - Mobile developers around the world are in an uproar over a change Vodafone has made in the U.K. that dramatically decreases the quality of their products and that they fear could prevent new and innovative mobile services from reaching the market. Wireless Ink, a New York-based company operating a service called Winksite that lets anyone develop their own mobile Web page, is one company impacted by the change. Winksite has a Web site that visitors can access from their PCs to sign up for a service that lets them build mobile Web pages. When users visit the Winksite page from their mobile phones, they see a totally different Web site that lets them view and discover sites developed by other Winksite users, said David Harper, the founder of Winksite. But since the change at Vodafone, U.K. mobile Winksite users instead see a reformatted version of the PC Web site. That's because Vodafone recently implemented new technology from Novarra that is designed to reformat Web sites that were created only for PC users for better display on mobile phones. But mobile service developers say that when Vodafone installed the new technology, it also began stripping out the user agent string when mobile phones access Web sites. The user agent allows a Web site that is designed for mobile phones to detect the type and capabilities of the phone visiting the site, much like the way that Web sites detect which type of browser a visitor has. The user agent string allows a mobile site publisher to deliver a view of the Web site that is optimized for the particular phone. In addition, companies that sell ring tones or graphics rely on the user agent to determine which content to send to the user that will work on their phone, Harper noted. Companies that are on Vodafone's "white list," which is a group of Vodafone-approved services, were notified of the change and the operator is passing the user agent correctly for those services, developers say. Some developers complain that it's difficult to find out how to get on the white list, it can take several months to get added, and that Vodafone requires white list companies to make certain changes to the way the included sites operate. If all operators had a similar process, service providers like Harper would have to get on the approved list for every operator around the world. That's comparable to asking any Web service to be approved by every ISP in the world in order to operate. "If this were to spread from carrier to carrier, it would be horrible," Harper said. About 10 percent of his traffic comes from the U.K. He worries that small mobile companies that are solely targeting the U.K. will be even harder hit. Winksite users include individuals as well as companies like Warner Music, which uses the service to build Web sites for music artists. It's unclear if Vodafone removed the user agent capability for "diabolical" reasons, such as to maintain firm control over the content that users can access, or if it was a legitimate mistake, Harper said. On a developers forum hosted by Vodafone, one poster who appears to work for Vodafone has defended the move and said that most customer feedback has been positive. He also said that many other European operators are in the process of implementing similar technologies. Vodafone was not available for comment after its regular business hours. Lucca Passani, a mobile services developer who has blogged extensively about the problem, worries that if Vodafone hasn't gotten user complaints, there's a simple reason. "The great majority of consumers won't realize that they have been deprived of a service and will not complain," he wrote. Harper and other developers don't take issue with the technology that can translate sites designed for PCs but they say that Vodafone doesn't need to block the user agent string for mobile sites in order to support that capability. "The bottom line is, they've done something a bit evil and they need to fix it," Harper said.
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An analyst rants Opinion Let me begin with a warning that am about to get on one of my hobby horses. This one has to do with the notion that modern wireless and mobile technology is largely about enabling people to become more mobile in the way they live and work, as if they were previously chained to one location and magically liberated by the latest gadgetry and connectivity. The notion seems to be that having access to email and other applications while mobile means that people are getting out and about more.â¦
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The Web 2.0 conference is under way in San Francisco, so the B.S. will be flying. Thanks to the innovators in Wired's Gadget Lab, you can contribute to the dung heap by using our Web 2.0 Summit startup and press kit to tout your own flim-flam company.
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InfoWorld - The wide variety of operating systems on mobile phones is hindering the growth of cool mobile Internet applications, according to Arun Sarin, CEO of network operator Vodafone.
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A headline last Sunday with the Ping column, about research partnerships between universities and corporations, referred incorrectly to the status of Bell Labs. Although it is no longer part of AT&T, it has not been discontinued; it is now the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent. The column also misspelled the surname of the president of Arizona State University, who said that universitiesâ roles in such partnerships would evolve in coming decades. He is Michael Crow, not Crowe.
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With a bit of a rebuttal for Harry Fuecks' statement that PHP has a great lack of international support comes this new posting from John Lim at PHPEverywhere.
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(InfoWorld) - In mature economies, the mobile phone started out as a luxury item, a convenient way to talk to friends and family from anywhere. But in emerging markets, first-time users are turning to mobile phones for more than convenient chatter. They're using their phones as the only way to access the Internet, to use banks for the first time, and to start small businesses. Opera Software, Vodafone Group, Google, and Nokia are among the companies that have recently offered evidence of the use of the mobile Web and other non-voice applications in emerging markets. In general, the use of mobile phones in developing economies is booming. The number of mobile subscribers in developing countries grew five-fold from 2000 to 2005, reaching 1.4 billion and accounting for 70 percent of the total global market, according to a recent report from Vodafone, The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor and World Resource Institute. Those subscribers are doing more than talking. "Mobile is becoming a significant way to access the Web and a growing number of people will get their first experience of the Net on a mobile device," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and chief executive at Nokia, during a recent investors conference. He says it makes sense that people in some emerging markets would use their phones instead of PCs to access the Internet. In India, for example, 136 million people have mobile phones and fewer than 20 million have PCs, Kallasvuo said. Nokia has evidence of the predominance of mobile Web users outside of developed regions. Its mobile-enabled Web site gets around 90 million hits every month and 60 million of those come from users in China, Kallasvuo said. Google has also recognized the trend. "Mobile devices in India and China are the primary devices for users to experience the Internet," said Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of global sales and business development for Google, speaking during a recent conference. With 1 billion Internet users and 2 billion mobile users around the world, it makes sense for Google to tweak its offerings for mobile users, he said. Browser developer Opera says that downloads of its Opera Mini client also demonstrate the widespread use of mobile phones to access the Web in developing economies. While Opera has primarily marketed Opera Mini in developed markets, India, South Africa, China, and Russia are among the top 10 regions for Opera Mini downloads, said Tor Odland, an Opera spokesman. Worldwide, 8 million people have installed Opera Mini, a small browser that users download onto their phones. The software communicates with Opera servers, which strip down Web sites so that they'll load quickly and fit nicely onto the small screens of mobile phones. Opera Mini is popular in Bangladesh and has lead to increased usage of Grameenphone Ltd.'s EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) network, said Shakil Ahmed, an engineer at Grameenphone. More than 1 million people subscribe to Grameenphone's EDGE offering with 250,000 of them regular users of the mobile Internet, he said. Grameenphone customers like Opera Mini because it lets them access the Web without owning a PC, he said. Because Opera hosts the servers that the phone software connects with to access the Internet, it can track where traffic is coming from. Recently, traffic in Africa has been growing, Odland said. Those African customers could be using Internet connections on their phones to do banking. Vodafone's recent report concluded that while using banks makes poor people less vulnerable in times of crisis, low-income people in Africa often don't bank because branches may be far from their homes and because transactions at cash machines and branches often incur fees. South Africa is an example of a place that could be ideal for mobile banking. Among people in South Africa who don't use banks, 19 percent have a cell phone and an additional 11 percent have access to a friend or family member's cell phone, the study found. The research also found that 94 percent of low-income people in South Africa who already do mobile banking say it's valuable because it's more affordable than traditional banking. Opera reports that despite not marketing Opera Mini in South Africa, 200,000 people in the country have downloaded the client. In 2005, just under 10 percent of the population of South Africa had Internet access, according to Research4Business, a research firm. Anecdotally, Opera is also seeing increased usage of Opera Mini in Nigeria. The company has been receiving e-mails from Nigerian users with questions on using the browser and other comments. One enterprising Nigerian, who e-mailed Opera with his story, found that people were asking him for help downloading and starting to use Opera Mini, said Rolf Assev, chief commercial officer for Opera. The Nigerian entrepreneur put an advertisement in the newspaper and now charges a fee for instruction on how to use the Internet via Opera Mini on cell phones. "He said, 'this is beautiful. People don't have computers but a lot of people have phones,'" Assev said.