Luxury Hotels Go Paperless and Mobile

Starting in January, the iPad tablet replaced touch panels in every guest room at The Plaza Hotel in New York City, where it provides guest services and room controls. 

Guests of the Plaza can use the touch screen to order room service, contact the concierge (or make their own dinner reservations), and control their room’s lighting and climate, plus general web browsing. Another benefit is moving away from having a guest directory in the room. 

The paperless benefit of the iPad is also being pushed by The Forty 1 North Hotel Marina Resortin Newport, Rhode Island, which puts in-room iPads on its list of eco-conscious measures. 

Directories, menus, maps, and daily newspapers are all delivered paperlessly to guests using the iPad.
(from CNBC)

Three Tablet Contenders Compared

There will be dozens of companies and hundreds of products involved in the Tablet competition ahead; just like there were when PCs were introduced in the 1980's. The difference now is that there are some powerful, big name, experienced companies involved. In the 80's they were mostly companies you'd never heard of making products they'd never made before.

Click here for an early look at three contenders - Apple iPad, Motorola Xoom and HP TouchPad. The Xoom is coming this summer; the Touchpad is due this month and a second version of the iPad should be out within two months.

Mobile Operating Systems Galore

First a little history - Some of us are old enough to remember what life was like before Microsoft Windows dominated the world of desktop computing starting in the late 1980s. For the previous ten years there were a dozen or more hardware designs and operating systems including Radio Shack (Trash 80), Commodore (Pet), Sinclair, Franklin, Timex, Altair, Atari, Heathkit, Ohio Scientific and of course the venerable Apple II. None of these survived or thrived for more than a few years. Even Apple faded into the background for a long dark night.

We are today in the middle of a similar struggle involving mobile operating systems. Early leaders included Palm and Blackberry. Now the question is: How many products can survive in the long run. In particular which operating system(s) will dominate. Once that is decided, phone and tablet makers as well as carriers will fight to differentiate their devices - all based on one of the dominate operating systems. The OS competition today involves Google Android, Google Chrome, Apple iOS, HP WebOS, MS Windows Phone 7, MS Windows Mobile, MS Windows 8 (possibly) and RIM Blackberry OS. And you thought it was a two way race.

How did this turn out in the PC world when (almost) everyone used Windows and also used basically the same hardware? It turned into a price war and there were many casualties. Hundreds of small and large companies went into and out of the PC business in the last twenty years. Technology was a minor consideration - shelf space and advertising budgets were what mattered most. PCs became commodities which meant the death of companies and the death of innovation.

There is every reason to believe this will happen in the mobile field as well. It's an issue of software developers, shelf space and mindshare. Companies can only develop apps for a limited number of operating systems; retailers have room for only a few products in their stores; and consumers and companies cannot spend countless hours choosing between dozens of platforms.

Watch this space (and every other space) for ongoing discussion of this exciting topic as the Mobile Internet unfolds before us.

About time we named these new gadgets

For several years now we've called our most popular new gadgets Mobile Devices. That's a name only a geek could love. We have smartphones and tablets of all sizes and they all share common characteristics so it makes sense to name this group. I think they should be referred to as - drum roll - Companion Computers. First, they really are computers and should be identified that way. Some are used as phones but referring to them as phones misleads the public into thinking they are primarily phones - they are not. We've had desktop computers and laptop or portable computers so it makes sense to use the word computer here as well. In fact, some survey organizations are now including iPads in computer sales statistics as I believe they should.

Companion has two meanings. First, many of these new devices will be with us constantly and will be our companions. Certainly smartphones and the smaller tablets - think smartphones without a phone - will be in our pockets, our bags and our cars. Larger tablets can be taken and used everywhere much more easily than "traditional" computers. Second, these computers will also be companions for our desktop and portable computers. They will not replace them in the near future and will coexist peacefully and perform whatever tasks each one does best.

I'd certainly like to hear what you think - other nominations are welcome.

The end of an era

Most Exciting Consumer Electronics Show Ever
By Horace Dediu (asymco)

At this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) two unthinkable things happened: The abandonment of Windows exclusivity by practically all of Microsoft’s OEM customers. The abandonment of Intel exclusivity by Microsoft for the next generation of Windows. Many of Microsoft’s customers chose to use an OS product from Microsoft’s arch enemy. Some chose to roll their own. Microsoft, in turn, chose to port its OS to an architecture from Intel’s arch enemy.

These actions confirm the end of the PC era. Although most people would characterize the era as exemplified by a particular form factor or market, for me the definition of that era is the way the value chain was structured and hence how profits were captured. That era was marked by the condensation of profits around two companies, Intel and Microsoft, with the simultaneous evaporation of profits from all other participants in the value chain.

To achieve this, Microsoft maintained a monopoly on the distribution of operating systems and Intel maintained a monopoly as the single supplier of chip architectures for that operating system. These monopolies are both over. And they both ended at the same time. And it happened this week.

Who says CES is boring this year?

How many was that again?

It's generally claimed but probably not true that IBM president Tom Watson said the world would need five computers. In 1980 many people thought the world needed just over four billion Internet addresses - wrong again! We know they believed this because that's how it was designed. All Internet addresses are numbers. The addresses we use - www.Braley.com for example - are immediately translated into a number (the real address of the site) before they are sent whizzing off to their destination. Imagine that you were setting up the records for a small town and decided to record every resident using a three digit number - after all it was a small town. Of course when person number 1,000 moves in, you have a problem.

That's exactly the predicament faced by the Internet - the 4.2+ billion Internet addresses are almost used up. People have seen this coming for a long time and created a new addressing system  that will be phased in over several years. Internet addresses are called IP addresses for Internet Protocol. The current version is IPv4 and the new version will be IPv6. IPv4 addresses consist of a 32 bit string of zeros and ones - bits. IPv6 will be 128 bits long. Keep in mind that every bit you add doubles the size of the maximum number. The fact that everything from cell phones to printers and refrigerators may get an IP addressed assigned in the future is no cause to worry since a 128 bit address is inconceivably large - a 4 followed by 38 zeros - just shy of a duodecilion!

Tiered pricing - coming soon to a cell phone near you

More details are being announced about the new way wireless companies will charge for your cell phone data plans. Tiered pricing is the general time for charging you by the speed of the service you choose and/or the amount of data you consume (download). The plans are likely to be horrendously complicated and a spike in monthly bills could be the first indication of what is happening. This Washington Post article provides some information about the subject. The trend will accelerate as companies roll out fourth generation (4G) services late this year and into 2011.

Ransomware - a costly computer infection

In case you thought you'd heard of every dire threat to your computer, here's one more to add to your list of things to worry about - ransomeware.

This recent Computer World article describes malware that can get into your Windows PC through Adobe PDF files. It will search your computer for various files - Word, Excel, etc. and then makes them unreadable. A message will be displayed demanding $120 to restore the files. This trick has been around for several years but two new recent versions may indicate the threat is coming back.

As with many other computer "dangers", this reinforces the need to keep software up to date and to perform regular backups.

Touch screens are not all created equal

Since touch screens are all the rage today, I thought I would expand on what I wrote last month when discussing stylus input. In that piece I explained the difference between resistive and capacitive touch screens - generally resistive screens are less expensive, require more pressure and are increasingly being replaced by capacitive models that are super sensitive to your touch.

If you compare touch devices, you will begin to notice more differences. Again there is a low cost approach that works like an ATM - touch an icon and an action is triggered. More sophisticated screens incorporate three additional capabilities - multitouch, physics and gestures.

As the name implies multitouch devices let you use more than one finger at a time - tapping with two fingers means something different than tapping with one - much like a right click on a mouse  produces a different result than a left click.

A physics capability means the response of the screen mimics physical actions. For example, swiping your finger across an ebook page causes the page to appear to "turn" like a real book. I first noticed the realism this adds one time while reading on my iPad and had the urge to actually pick up the page to turn it. it became that "real" because of the way the device responded to my movement.

Finally, gesture means the screen responds to movements - such as the swipe across the screen mentioned above. A common example is that opening or closing two fingers changes the magnification of the displayed image - combining multitouch (two fingers) with gestures (finger movement).


Both e-readers and tablets will drop in price sooner rather than later. We've already seen a significant drop in e-reader prices as a result of the iPad introduction. One way to reduce prices when the pressure becomes intense will be to use cheaper, less sophisticated touch screens. There's nothing inherently wrong with this but you need to make sure you know what you are getting before you buy.

Without gestures, tapping an icon would turn a page. Without physics pages would turn in some programmed fashion. These may seem like minor issues until you experiment with different products. In general the lower priced gadgets will have the least number of these capabilities. How "natural" it feels to use a touch screen will depend significantly on if and how multitouch, physics and gestures are incorporated.

A hornet's nest - what a difference a year makes

You have to give Apple credit for one thing - they've really stirred up a hornet's nest in the tablet computer business. Think back just one year - does anyone remember a single mention of "tablet computer?" Probably not unless it was an historical reference to Alan Kaye's Dyanabook design (1968), the Apple Newton (1993) or Microsoft's tablet announcement (2000). With the exception of "convertibles" and other variations on the PC notebook theme, major computer companies did not appear to have a tablet device under consideration - much less development.

Fast forward to the present. Technologizer just published a list of 32 tablets from 26 companies. A few are available; most are "coming soon". Vendors include the big names - HP, Motorola, Dell, RIM, Samsung, Sony, Cisco, Lenovo and Toshiba - but others are really a stretch - Nefonia and Fushion Garage for example. Very few are direct competitors to the iPad; some are aimed at students with very low cost and others are directed specifically toward businesses. Some are as small as 5 inch screens; the iPad is 9.7. CIO has a discussion of 15 Apple iPad Rivals as well. It's phenomenal that a category of product that did not exist a year ago is all everybody is talking about - not just a gadget but a whole category of gadgets. Certainly the personal computer was a new product category but it took ten years to catch on (1975-1985).

A look back at the Internet
This situation reminds me of the time way back in 1995 when I wrote an article on the "new thing" called The Internet ("The" was capitalized in those days). Now the Internet wasn't really new then; it had been in wide spread use in the Defense Department, universities and research institutions for years. In those days mere mortals could search specific locations on line using Compuserve, AOL and Prodigy. You couldn't Google or search Web sites since Google and the Web had not been invented.

I did search the archives of the Minneapolis Star Tribune using Compuserve and saw that three years earlier there was only one mention of the Internet; a year later it was less than a hundred; from then on it exploded into the thousands. That's the trend I see happening now - not just due to the iPad - but the Mobile Internet in general which includes smartphones and other devices yet to be named. I predict that in three years most people will find it hard to imagine a world without tablet computers.

A technology refresher - back to the basics

Many of the new technologies and “gadgets” we encounter today are related to the “Mobile Internet”. You’ve probably heard the term and have some vague notion what it’s all about. It can be embarrassing though, to ask questions in this area when everyone in the room seems to understand what’s happening – except you! Believe me, you’re not alone; most people have little comprehension of the dramatic changes that are occurring today – changes that will completely alter the way we work, play, learn and communicate in the very near future.

A little background

The Internet is a collection of millions of computers connected by a complex collection of cables. A set of programs - often called protocols - make these computers work together. The World Wide Web (the Web) is collection of files that are stored on Internet computers (called servers). These files can be viewed on your computer using a browser program and they are sent to your computer by a program called a Web server.

There are numerous programs besides the Web that use the Internet – an email application such as outlook would be one; file download using FTP is another non-Web application that uses the Internet. Incidentally, your computer can have a Web server installed allowing people all over the world to access files you want to share – you can host your own Web site and it is really not that difficult to do.

Now some basic definitions

A Feature Phone is a cell phone that can store your contacts, send and receive email, browse the Web, play music, etc. It comes with a built-in set of programs (called apps – short for applications).

A Smart Phone is a step up from a feature phone since you can easily install apps yourself. The Apple iPhone 3G released in 2008 was the first true smart phone but many others have been introduced since that time. The MobileBurn Web site contains a searchable database of recent phones. Apps on these phones use the Internet and may or may not use the Web. The important point is they are very simple to use and do not involve a browser – they connect directly to various Internet/Web services with the simple touch of a button.

A Netbook is a small, low powered, low cost laptop computer. They are light duty computers intended for mobile tasks including email and Web surfing. Their low powered processors can not handle video production and their small screens and keyboards also limit their uses.

An eBook Reader - or just e-reader - such as the Amazon Kindle is primarily used for reading books downloaded from the Internet. Their specialized “eInk” displays are said to be easier on the eyes than a traditional display for extensive reading. They are very lightweight and some can also surf the Web.

A modern Tablet Computer is a “real” computer since it has a general-purpose operating system and the basic hardware elements of a PC. The Apple iPad is the best know example at the present. Virtually every major electronics company would like to produce an “iPad killer” and there are announcements every week by somebody who will make one “soon”. Recently discussed and announced models have included smaller screens than the iPad, have been directed toward business more than consumers and are promoted for content creation and not primarily consumption. Most tablets discussed so far use smart phone operating systems but others will use a mobile version of Windows 7 to mimic a standard PC.

What Lies Ahead

·  Confusion will be rampant in the near term since it will be difficult to distinguish one category from another. Is a device with a five-inch screen a large smart phone or a small tablet?  As new devices come out, new categories will emerge as well.

·  The typical wireless data plan has allowed users unlimited data downloads for a fixed fee of $30. That will change soon since smart phone and tablet usage is overwhelming the infrastructure of the carriers. Some are already moving toward “tiered” pricing where you pay for different levels of capacity.

·  Many of the specialized “gadgets” we have today will be “rolled into” smart phones and tablets. You will no longer need basic cameras, GPS navigation devices, MP3 and DVD players, calculators and a host of other devices since these can easily be incorporated into smart phones and tablets.

·  Since tablets are general-purpose devices, they pose a serious threat to both netbooks and ebook readers.

·  Just as a few companies have dominated the PC industry, it is likely that many smart phone and tablet makers will be knocked out of contention in the next few years; Investors and consumers are already placing their bets.

·  Speech recognition will be widely used to dictate text, search the Web and perform other basic data entry tasks. Versions available today are very accurate, easy to use and inexpensive. Users will find that the best keyboard may often be no keyboard.

The new world of the Mobile Internet is here and the fast pace of change occurring now means our information society will be completely remade in ways we can barely imagine today.

The Dark Side of the digital age

Many of us take more photos on a long weekend than we did the entire time we used film cameras. Arguably the quality is improved based on immediate feedback and numerous retakes. We also avoid finding out when our film is developed - and our vacation is over - that an entire roll was poorly exposed due to unusual lighting conditions or an improper camera setting. All in all we feel like we've solved one of the world's greatest problems - documenting our lives for future generations. After all we repeatedly view, sort and arrange those precious pictures taken a century ago. We hang them on the wall and proudly point to great-uncle Eggbert as we relate our family's illustrious or not-so illustrious history. But there is a looming downside to the digital age and it affects much more than our photo libraries.

I'm often ask about the best way to store/archive photos and other files for the long term and I give the same simplistic answers as every other "expert" - make copies on CDs, store them off-site, etc., etc. But the very serious problem of long term storage of files of all types was discussed recently in Computerworld and here is a hint of the problem.

The Domesday book - a detailed property ownership survey in England commissioned by William the Conqueror - was published in 1086. It was recorded on sheepskin and written in Latin. In 1986 an updated version was prepared using the latest technology - laser discs. Guess which one was readable fifteen years later - assuming you or a friend could read Latin. That's right, the 935 year old book could be read but the "modern version" could not because the laser disc players and software were obsolete. Reading the 1986 version required significant custom hardware and software engineering.

Reading at least part of the the article by Lamont Wood is informative. Organizations with substantial concerns include the Library of Congress, the National Archives and the U.S. Geological Survey and you can forget about gigabytes; they talk in terabytes and petabytes (one thousand and one million gigabytes respectively.) The problem is reminiscent of the Year 2000 Problem but this one will not be over in five years. Digital data has the potential to last literally forever - it's all just collections of zeros and ones - providing archiving strategies are developed to store those quadrillions (petabytes) of bits.

A fight to the death in the eBook wars

Early this year everybody was going to sell an ebook reader to compete with the Kindle. However, the introduction of the $500 iPad - also an ebook reader - changed everything. The IEEE Spectrum has a really good discussion of the latest developments in this fast changing field - who's in who's out and who's on the ropes. As the price wars continue, remember an ebook reader is only as good as its supply of books. As companies drop out of the race their devices could become $200 boat anchors. Whoops, sorry about the old cliche - boat anchors need to weigh more than a pound!

More info about spotting dangerous web site links

 A reader ask for more information on this item from a previous post.

An address you see in an email message or web page may look legitimate but the link connected to that address may be entirely different. The button or words you click on are totally arbitrary and the underlying web address (the hyperlink) is what matters.

There are two easy ways to discover the real address of a clickable button or text phrase. You can "hover" over the item - move your mouse pointer over it without clicking - and see the real link displayed - usually at the lower left border of the browser window. You can also right click on the text or button and choose "copy the link" or "copy the shortcut". Then past this into your browser window address bar or any other document and see the actual link displayed. Both approaches - hover and copy/paste should also work with email messages that include links.


As mentioned in the earlier post, you should look closely at the Top Level Domain Name - which includes .com, .edu, .gov and country codes such as .us, .ch, .ru, etc.

A PC Defender - What do you think of his idea?

John Dvorak, a well known PC writer. has this to say when comparing desktop PCs to mobile devices "With my PC I can actually calculate, with accuracy, the trajectory of a rocket shot to the moon, and the amount of fuel it needs to get there. On my desktop." Is this something we all need to worry about? Read the entire article in PC Magazine.

The Players and the Products

The rapidly evolving fields of mobile hardware, operating systems and apps is shaking up the list of prominent consumer technology suppliers. In the past, we heard a lot about the PC makers - Dell, HP, etc. - as well as cell phone companies including Motorola, RIM and Palm. These companies are becoming "niche players" - supplying PCs and cell phones - while Google and Apple are battling it out for the hearts and minds of the public.

In the following chart I've listed four companies and indicated the products they offer. Microsoft, Google and Apple have a broad range of offerings and will be competing across the field. I've included Amazon because of its huge content offering as well as its leadership position in the eBook field.
              (Click to enlarge)

While I was preparing this chart several significant announcements were made - Microsoft decided not to release it's Courier tablet. HP did the same with its Slate tablet. At the same time HP announced it would purchase beleaguered Palm - once considered the leading smartphone company. This could mean HP will switch to the Palm WebOS for its tablets instead of Windows - a major change for two big players.

It is likely that many products will be merged into other categories - mp3 players and GPS systems will be included in smart phones, for example. Nevertheless, it is instructive to compare the offerings each player currently has and try to predict the ultimate winners of this fascinating contest.

Great Article on "Good Enough" Design

In a comment on my post about the Mobile Internet, Brian offered a link to a Wired Magazine article on how companies over-design products. It is a compelling argument about how products are "enhanced" with numerous features that most people don't need. Unfortunately, the "one size fits all" model has meant everybody has to have the largest, most complex, most expensive version. As new gadgets including tablets and smartphones are announced, this article is a great read.

Tablets by the Dozens Arriving Soon

This year has been dubbed "The Year of the Tablet" for good reason. In addition the much-hyped April 3rd release of the Apple iPad, the company responsible for the design of many of these devices believes fifty other products will be introduced in 2010. While most people aren't familiar with ARM, this company licenses the right to its processor design to the majority of smart phone and tablet computer makers. Many of these devices will use mobile operating systems similar to those used by smartphones today. A few tablets will be be based on the Windows OS and some will use the Intel Atom processor which is at the heart of most netbooks.

While tablets have been around for twenty years and Microsoft introduced their mobile OS in 2001, these early models have been primarily used in specialized fields such as healthcare where they could replace a chart, clipboard or PC at the bedside. It's possible to get confused at this point since "tablet" also refers to totally unrelated drawing devices used with a "pen" by graphic designers - a "graphic tablet".

While some people couldn't imagine using anything less than a full operating system like Windows or MacOS, differences in mobile and desktop computing are forcing a second look at OS technology. Desktop (and laptop) computers are based on keyboard input and mouse control. For most people they also involve a small number of very complicated programs; the latest version of MS Word has 1,500 commands and Excel has a similar number. In contrast smartphones and their new cousins, tablets, use touch screens for the user interface (UI) and a large number of simple programs (apps). In addition smartphones and many tablets will incorporate GPS, music, video and game applications that are very different from the desktop PC model.

The Mobile Internet: the Fourth Revolution

My name is Gary Braley. I've been writing and speaking on information technology as a developer and consultant in aerospace and healthcare applications for many years. I've been sending out a newsletter for six months (see February Issue) but I have so much to say I decided to try blogging as another outlet.

My Web Site is Braley.com

and my LinkedIn Profile is LinkedIn.com/in/garybraley

To kick this project off, I'm going to discuss one of the current "hot topics" -

The Mobile Internet

There have been three information revolutions: first was the adoption of digital computers beginning in 1960; second, the introduction of PCs in the 1980s and third, the spread of information through the Internet in the 1990s. We are now beginning the fourth revolution and it is happening faster than any of the others – the Mobile Internet.

For many years – “information access” meant being shackled to a desktop computer at home or in the office. Progress was made when portable computers were introduced – slowly at first – remember the Osborne I weighed twenty-four pounds.

As laptop portability improved, information normally stored in the office could be taken anywhere. Internet access in the 1990s made a major change in the way we communicate and retrieve information. Significant technology changes are often complex and stressful but the latest one is different. The Mobile Internet makes more information available anywhere anytime and – most importantly – is extremely easy to learn.

Until now, using a new program (application) involved

• Evaluating the choices
• Purchasing and expensive program
• Struggling through a difficult installation process
• Learning to navigate hundreds of - mostly unused - commands
• Months of Practice

The current "app" approach is easier in every respect.

• These programs are single purpose and often have less than ten commands
• The user interface is intuitive and a few minutes of experimentation is adequate
• Many apps are free and others cost less than five dollars
• Purchase, installation and startup can take as little as two minutes
• Upgrades are downloaded automatically
• Apps can be used anywhere since they run on smart phones and tablet computers.