Category: Opinions

Mp3.com copies of Cloud music storage services from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple

Posted by Charbax – March 30, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google

11 years ago, Mp3.com provided unlimited cloud music storage for free. You’d just put your CD in the CD reader and all the songs would instantly beam to your account, no uploading even needed as long as the CD was in their cloud storage. It was awesome. Mp3.com got sued by all the record companies in the world, and lost because Universal insisted not to make an out of court settlement like all the other labels did, so Universal got the Mp3.com domain and basically destroyed all the genius that was there and did nothing with the domain these past 11 years. Mp3.com was much more than a cloud music storage service, that was just one of their last features. Their main strength was in providing a platform for all independent artists to release their music, get fans, make money selling downloads, streams, even on-demand burned CDs and merchandize. Mp3.com would give $1 Million per month from their ad revenue to the artists based on the popularity of their free mp3 downloads. It was awesome, and it could have gotten so much better (it was too hard to find good music, they should have done an automatic recommendations engine based on user ratings). Record companies saw a threat in Mp3.com becoming the big independent record label for all artists, turning all artists into independent artists, thus they saw an opportunity in sueing them for their music locker service, as an excuse to shut it down and delay the whole independent music revolution for another decade.

Michael Robertson, the enterpreneur behind Mp3.com, did a whole bunch of other cool stuff since. Including Gizmo5 bought by Google to add VOIP SIP features to Google Voice (I presume.. internationalization of Google Voice is still hopefully coming up), the Linspire Linux OS (formely Lindows, they had to change the name because of a Microsoft lawsuit) was online with an app store and 40’000+ apps 4 years before the Apple “appstore”, he also redid his Music locker idea at Mp3tunes.com

While I wish Google, Amazon, Apple all the best in licencing access to unlimited music streaming service and combine it with music locker for $1/song purchased songs, here’s what I would like these cloud storage for multimedia file services to be like:

1. Mp3 files, DivX files, MKV files, that are common, must be free to store. As the cloud service only needs to store one of each file, if you upload a pirated Mp3, DivX, MKV, Flac, then it should recognize it and not charge you for the storage. This way, people could beam Terrabytes of music, movies and TV shows to their cloud storage and not have to pay for any storage.

2. No need to upload the file if an uploading app recognizes the file as already being on the cloud. Then let it just beam the file to the cloud storage, and provide unlimited streaming from there.

3. Firm unbreakable promise that the cloud service providers are not going to hand over the index of all the pirated files to RIAA and MPAA. What would be the point in showing those copyrights holders what you pirate.

4. Cloud services need to provide one-click export/copy to another cloud service, meaning they can talk directly to each other, even share the files efficiently across all the cloud services.

5. The cloud service providers, perhaps with help from the Government, need to implement global content subscription plans, around $10 per month should give unlimited legal access to all Music, Movies, TV Shows, Ebooks and Applications. If everyone in Europe and the USA paid $10 per month, that would amount to $60 Billion per year, plenty enough to pay for all the content creators directly, no DRM needed, no separate subscription plans needed, one plan should provide legal access to everything, and piracy can get legalized.

6. The cloud storage services can smartly integrate with P2P networks if needed, to facilitate mass distribution of all the huge files. Eventually do something similar to Wuala, or they could simply implement BitTorrent and smart BitTorrent caching systems in cooperation with all the ISPs. The idea is this, the cloud distribution system must be able to manage that 1 million people want to download the same 4.5GB 720p MKV movie file at full speed all at the same time, eventually download it in a way it can be played back while downloading (p2p streaming).

What would you like to see the cloud service providers do to provide better cloud storage for multimedia file streaming?

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Sony and Samsung to release ARM Powered Chrome OS notebooks this summer?

Posted by Charbax – March 27, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google

Picture of the new release of Google Chrome OS

Image via Wikipedia

Yes! Well, I just put this out here, as a rumor. What do you think?

Here’s what I think Samsung is doing, preparing a super thin Exynos 4210 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Here’s what I think Sony is doing, preparing a super thin Nvidia Tegra2 ARM Cortex-A9 based laptop for summer release, running Chrome OS nicely and 10+ hours battery runtime even as it weights less than a kilo.

Best kicker out of all this? MSRP for these should be below $199 unsubsidized for the whole chew-bang. Those could even be sold $99 subsidized yet not even requiring a contract but just using month-to-month 3G/LTE data as a service (for example, just requiring that the user pay the first $100 in data credit in advance, could be enough for 5 months of $20/month/2GB data service packages, using more than 2GB/month on cellular and the user would have to pay more at a rate of $10/GB on demand or just use the Internet over WiFi or Ethernet for free). Include a 1280×800 Pixel Qi screen, and the battery runtime instantly could increase to upwards 30 hours and the whole experience be sunlight readable.

Of course, Toshiba, Dell, Acer, Asus are all also working on this. And all the Texas Instruments OMAP4430/4440, Marvell Armada 610, Freescale i.MX6 and even Nvidia Tegra3 are also going to be among the choices used in these devices.

Obviously, Apple is investing a farm in preparing their first Apple A5 ARM Cortex-A9 powered OSX for ARM Powered Macbook mega-slim, and Microsoft is investing a castle in making Windows 8 for ARM ready on time so they can try to convince ARM Powered laptop makers to just use Windows as a Chrome OS or Ubuntu alternative.

How quickly do you think ARM Powered laptops will dominate the laptop market? Post your opinions in the comments.

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Intel Atom inventor/CEO fired? Intel’s lower power Mobile Computing efforts failing?

Posted by Charbax – March 27, 2011
Category: Opinions

Anand Chandrasekher

Image by umpcportal.com via Flickr

Last week, the blogosphere exploded with speculation about what really happened at Intel, as Anand Chandrasekher, the founder of the Intel Atom group, the man responsible for launching Intel’s MID and UMPC initiatives, the manager of Intel’s efforts to reach into tablets and smartphones, he was either fired or he voluntarily resigned, it’s often hard to really know which is which (when everyone involved already is a billionaire), as often a firing can be obfuscated as a resignation, to keep the interpretation of the transaction as positive as possible, and not create a scandal out of such announcement. And as senior vice president at Intel, employee of Intel throughout 24 years, he has been well paid and would feel no need to diss his now former employer.

Anyways, I don’t need to ramble more about things I don’t know about. The purpose of this thread is for you to comment here about what you think is really happening at Intel. Do you think Intel should give up and simply join the rest of the Industry in licencing the ARM Architechture and bring back new Intel customized and optimized ARM Processor designs? Why wouldn’t Intel simply licence the ARM Architecture and use some of their 82500 employees to work on that? Why wouldn’t Intel afford to work on both x86 and ARM and deliver on the full potential of what their industry leading semiconductor R&D and fabs are able to output, thus deliver the chips that the industry demands for? Why does Intel absolutely need to try to force their x86 onto an industry which obviously prefers choice?

Another fun fact, Intel recently acquired for $1.4 Billion a division of Infineon Technologies AG, called Wireless Solutions (WLS) that has more than 3,500 employees worldwide. Out of that acquisition, Intel is now releasing the XMM 6260 platform, which they say is the worlds smallest HSPA+ 40nm baseband processor, brace for it, it’s obviously an ARM11 SoC, now made and sold by Intel.

In Barcelona this week Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that Intel’s new XMM 6260 platform is shipping to customers and will be found inside smartphones later this year. Sounds familiar? Well it might because Intel has been trying its best to find a way into smartphones for years. This time howver I think they might just make it happen. Why? Because it turns out that the XMM 6260 is in fact an ARM11 SoC designed by Infineon and manufactured in Taiwan by TSMC. Looks like, Intel’s secret weapon against ARM is…er…ARM. Quoted from: shanzai.com

What other areas would you agree with me, that Intel should just kill their darlings, they should just swallow the pill, Intel needs to licence the ARM Architecture and they need crank out the best ARM Processors they can make out of their best in world foundries. That does not mean Intel needs to give up on x86 at all, it just means they need to stop trying to cram x86 down everyones throats and they need to get with the trend in free market competition that means provide better choices for the industry.

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Honeycomb source code and CDD delayed

Posted by Charbax – March 24, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Archos, Google, Android

Businessweek reports that Google has decided to delay Honeycomb source code release.

The search giant says the software, which is tailored specifically for tablet computers that compete against Apple’s iPad, is not yet ready to be altered by outside programmers and customized for other devices, such as phones.

“To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs,” says Andy Rubin, vice-president for engineering at Google and head of its Android group. “We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.”

Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development, it couldn’t prevent developers from putting the software on phones “and creating a really bad user experience. We have no idea if it will even work on phones.”

Here is my opinion on this:

As long as Google releases the full Honeycomb source code within a month or so from now, and hurry up to confirm (even sooner) that the updated Compliance Definition Document for Honeycomb will open up to allow many more smaller manufacturers (such as Archos, Rockchip, Telechips, ARM11 and many other small tablet makers) access to the full Google Marketplace (that can provide filtering), then all will be good.

My expectation is that Google is working to make sure their Honeycomb source code release supports all types of hardware, not only including cheaper ARM Cortex-A8, ARM9, ARM11 tablets, but also optimize things for Laptop use (see Asus Transformer, how awesome would Honeycomb be on devices like Toshiba AC100!), and also they might try to coordinate the Honeycomb source code release with the first open source release of Google TV thus making all those devices Set-top-box ready when HDMI output is used on any HDTV.

One can expect Google to synchronize full open source release of Honeycomb, Google TV and Chrome OS by the Google I/O conference coming up on 10-11th May or before.

What is your opinion on Google’s Honeycomb source code and updated CDD release delay? You can write in the comments.

Archos Gen9 tablets, 1.6Ghz Dual-core, 3G, to be announced in June

Posted by Charbax – March 18, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Archos, Google

Archos just announced that their revenues are up 44% for 2010 sales compared to 2009 sales, to $118 Million in yearly sales. They also managed to increase their profit margins from 13.5% to 23.3%. In terms of actual profits after R&D, Marketing and other expenses, Archos is about break-even. Archos plans to more than double its revenues and profits in 2011, grabbing about 5% of the worldwide tablet market share expected in 2011 (they captured 22% market share in France for November-December 2010, behind iPad 67% but infront of Samsung 4%, so it should be doable even as tablet competition strongly increases). They plan to do that among other by launching Generation 9 in June (at least show it for the first time), that’s only 3 months from now!

Here are the first few details as reported by bestofmicro.com from what they heard at Archos investors meeting today about the Gen9 tablets (what’s in bold is from the report, the rest of following text are my added speculations and guessing):

– ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core 1.6Ghz, it’s the fastest processor in a tablet ever unveiled thus far. I expect this to be a customized Texas Instruments OMAP4440, but that is only because I guess Archos will continue their long time partnership with TI that they’ve had for over 10 years now.

– New innovative 3G modem. Yup, we’re getting 3G (at least as an option). What kind of 3G? How they implement it? I dunno, it seems they have a new special way of doing it? I hope they do it with some kind of modem module that can be added or swaped, thus making the tablet compatible with all types of cellular networks current and future and making production and distribution easy, anyone think it could be a module? Somehow allowing for space for a standard USB 3G modem on an “internal” USB host could also be a very innovative way to simply add 3G to the devices, the back of the device could “simply” have some space available to insert any standard compact 3G modem such as the Huawei or ZTE 3G usb dongles that anyone can buy everywhere for as little as $20 unlocked.

– 6 sizes from 5″ to 10″. That’s the sizes it seems they are aiming at. It might mean Archos noticed their 7″ and 10″ Gen8 were much more popular and in demand than the smaller sizes, and it might mean Archos is realizing a tablet has to be at least 5″, perhaps they leave the smaller sizes to the Arnova line? I expect/hope all are capacitive, even the 5″ one. Likely sizes are 5″, 7″, 10.1″, other possible sizes (since there are 6 sizes planned), 9.7″ 4:3 aspect ratio, 5.8″, 8.9″, 8″ 4:3 aspect ratio. I also hope Archos and Pixel Qi can synchronize release schedules so Archos can provide Pixel Qi matte capacitive screen option on all these sizes, at least as an option. Would you pay $50/$100 extra for Pixel Qi if Pixel Qi is not yet fully mass produced? One can hope Pixel Qi is fully mass produced in time, and that somehow Archos sees the opportunity in using it accross the line, thus making Gen9 ready for productivity, ready for real reading, ready for outdoor use, ready for use in professional and study situations, ready for serious collaboration on text annotations, ready to be Kindle-killer and iPad-killer all at the same time.

– All are Android, obviously it has to be Honeycomb (source code for Honeycomb has yet to be released in the open by Google, it should be done any day now), can Google finally open up Android and allow value Archos tablets the full Google Marketplace access? I would expect so, that could hopefully allow Archos to be certified. (this is totally up to Google is my guess)

– Archos says they continue to focus on aiming for the medium range pricing. My guess is it likely stays below $300, but if they do 3G, Pixel Qi and if they are first out with OMAP4440, who knows, perhaps the price might sneak up to something below $400. Archos CEO is planning all this based on offering the best possible value they can, my guess is that they aim to stay below $300 for the basic models.

– They continue to make hard drive versions. Reason being hard drives provide much more storage at much lower cost. My expectation is at least some of the 6 sizes will have hard drive options. Capacity can depend on how thick they can accept that hard drive to be, cause 2.5″ hard drives can go up to 1TB as far as I know, but those are probably too fat. So 250GB for sure, 320GB and 500GB again maybe, if the 320GB or/and 500GB are available in super slim mode.

Well that’s all they have teased for us for now. What other features are you hoping Archos is preparing for us in the Gen9 tablets? write in the comments. You can also comment in the forum: http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=43708&p=337531#p337531

Sources: http://www.archos.com/corporate/investors/financial_doc/ARCHOS_2010_Results_en.pdf, http://www.bestofmicro.com/actualite/28876-Tablette-Android.html

Nintendo Wii2 to be be ARM Powered?

Posted by Charbax – March 16, 2011
Category: Gaming, Opinions, Google

Logo circa 2008

Image via Wikipedia

There are some rumors and speculation that Nintendo might unveil Wii2 at E3 in June. Here’s what I think Nintendo should do:

1. Sell it for $99 as an ARM Powered set-top-box

2. Use ARM Cortex-A9 Dual-core or Quad-core with future proof 1080p graphics, even support 1080p 3D output.

3. Little integrated storage, but include SD card slot(s) and support USB Host for external hard drive storage.

4. It’s a Blu-ray player, but all the games should be downloadable and stored on SD cards or USB hard drives.

5. Nintendo should start unlimited games subscription packages, games are downloaded from the Internet, eventually even use BitTorrent, synchronize also unlimited games onto the Nintendo 3DS and using new official Game Cart for previous Nintendo portable and home consoles. The main problem with this is the disruption of retail stores and the ways they promote the sale of video games. But it’s a change Nintendo has to make. $10-$20 per month in a subscription should give unlimited access to all past and future Nintendo games for home and portable consoles.

6. Wii2 should run Google TV software in my opinion, so it also doubles as the best HDTV VOD Set-top-box, so it disrupts regular TV programming, Nintendo can turn everything to on-demand entertainment in the living room.

7. All previous Nintendo games can be updated online, and can receive new online gaming modes.

8. Built-in HD video conferencing, might require additional HD usb webcam.

9. The Wii2 creates a WiFi hotspot to interact automatically with the 3DS/DSi/DS, and includes Bluetooth also for remote controls, including also a bluetooth keyboard and a bluetooth headset.

10. New innovative virtual reality gaming mechanisms, might add Kinect-style 3D cameras, but more likely, new Wii game controllers, new gloves and even detectors on feet for a full virtual reality experience. Maybe they integrate sensors like the Freescale MMA9550L in their new remotes and compact body sensors. Some type of glasses with two IR emitters perhaps as well using this trick.

11. The size should be barely larger than a dual CD case. With Blu-ray player in there, HDMI output (possibly HDMI input/throughput also for full Google TV like features and easy setup), Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 host ports, new TV sensor ports.

Which ARM chip provider could get that deal with Nintendo to be mass produced into Wii2? Could it be Nvidia’s Kal-El, OMAP4440, i.MX6, Marvell’s Tri-Core, Qualcomm’s Quad-core? What do you think Nintendo should do for the Wii2? Write in the comments..

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ARM Cortex-A15 might be 40% faster than Cortex-A9 at same Mhz and number of cores

Posted by Charbax – March 16, 2011
Category: Opinions

ARM Cortex-A15 which might already be available in products next year, is reported by itproportal.com, could be 40% more performance per Mhz per core.

The Cortex-A8 reached 2.0 DMIPS/MHz while the Cortex-A9 reached 2.5 DMIPS/MHz, a 25 per cent improvement. According to our contact at ARM, the A15 has a “published but not formal number” of 3.5 DMIPS/MHz but told us that the performance difference across generation is “dependent on many factors” before adding that “Other benchmarks can show less improvement on specific devices, others a greater improvement”.

What’s more we already know of at least one manufacturer who has published benchmark figures for the Cortex-A15; Last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, ST-Ericsson revealed that its new system on Chip, the Nova A9600, would have two Cortex-A15 core, runs at 2.5GHz and, more importantly, breaks the 20,000 DMIPS barrier.

This means that the ST-Ericsson’s tweaked implementation of the Cortex-A15 can reach at least 4.01 DMIPS/MHz, which is itself a 14 per cent improvement upon what ARM’s figures.

We’ve also been tipped off by an anonymous source outside ARM that the company will be announcing a major breakthrough by the end of the 2011; just one year after the unveiling of the Cortex-A15.

Source: http://itproportal.com/2011/03/14/exclusive-arm-cortex-a15-40-cent-faster-cortex-a9/

iPad2 review (by Charlie Brooker)

Posted by Charbax – March 16, 2011
Category: Opinions

language and tone of the video may offend some..

If you are in the UK, this video may be blocked, you can watch the whole episode at: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/10-oclock-live/4od (Thursday 3rd March, 10pm, about 25 minutes in) (that streaming service from Channel 4 only works within the UK)

Source: dvorak.org/blog

Why the Motorola Atrix 4G+Dock is better than a Smartphone+Netbook

Posted by Charbax – March 14, 2011
Category: Opinions

While I am eager to see more of the Motorola Atrix 4G (I don’t know if I can get/find/buy a review unit), having tried it at CES (and interviewed the product manager in this 15-minute video) and at Mobile World Congress, having written about how I think this concept is an example of the ultimate ARM Powered device, as the Motorola Atrix 4G is being released in the USA, here are some of my arguments for why this is a taste of the best mobile computing solution for all:

– Cheaper to make (does not mean it’s cheaper to sell, for some reason anything related to telcos is over-priced..). The Bill Of Material of Motorola Atrix 4G is probably close to $150, and the Laptop Dock which consists only of a screen, keyboard and battery must not cost much more than $50 to actually make, even with this pretty high resolution screen.

– Lasts much longer on a battery, Motorola says 8 hours, this thin battery might compare with something like a 2-cell battery on an Intel Atom powered netbook. Since the screen is the most power consuming part of the device, if they used Pixel Qi, the battery runtime might be 30 hours for this setup.

– Thinner

– Lighter (if they didn’t put such heavy metals in the laptop dock), it seems to me the metals used on the laptop dock of Motorola Atrix 4G may make it a bit unnecessarily heavy. But perhaps some people find it just fine and good heavy metals make it seem like good construction quality perhaps.

– More secure, we all know and understand cloud services and embedded OS are much more secure than trying luck with a Windows based x86 PC. If Motorola had used TrustZone and NFC, it would even had been the absolute ultimate 100% secure and unhackable system to use for any online authentication or money transactions.

– Faster than intel atom (if they used a faster processor than Tegra2, with more memory bandwidth, such as Exynos 4210, OMAP4430 or ST-Ericsson U8500, when I tested it at CES and MWC, the web browsing with multiple tabs was not fast enough, I think I understood that that may be due to Tegra2’s slow memory bandwidth perhaps not yet suitable for multi-tab laptop/desktop style web browsing, I hope Motorola/Nvidia/Mozilla have fixed this in software updates since..)

– Simpler, all your data is always there and synchronized, you always know where to find your data. This is the dream of SysAdmins, they can just give all the employees this system and know it just works, auto-updates, if a unit breaks, everything is automatically resynchronized, hardware upgrades are also seamless.

– Much lower power consumption, save money on power, save the earth eventually, using this type of laptop should become mandatory

– Unbloated, no more crappy software that crashes and fills with viruses and malware (would be better if it “simply” ran Honeycomb with that Chrome browser inside and optimized for laptop use)

– Instant boot, no more waiting

– Seamless resume of multimedia playback on different screen

– There is more.. what do you think? Write in the comments..

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Apple’s manufactured scarcity, free publicity, playing for the analysts

Posted by Charbax – March 12, 2011
Category: Opinions, Archos, Google

The craze started at the release of iPhone1 in June 2007. I remember watching the live stream on Mogulus, predecesor to livestream.com, it was filmed and broadcast by Max Haost, founder of livestream.com and they were extremely hilarious in the way they would actually make fun of the people standing in line. I find this unbelievably hilarious, it’s the extreme example of the gadget-craze (out-of-control gadget consumerism?)


The ipad 2 line in Houston, TX as reported by Engadget.

Blame the analysts, unless they see lines, they think Apple isn’t selling any products.

This launch was engineered to generate lines (no pre-orders, 3 week waits if ordered on line…) and lots of free publicity…

Comment by Ghostbear1 in that Engadget article.

the scarcity principle is the mother of all marketing techniques (…) We generally perceive that things that are difficult to get are typically better than things that are easily available. If everyone wants it then it must be good right? This actually taps into the principle called social proof

Source: salescrunch.com

Queuing up for a piece of gadget is a really weird concept. In theory, especially for Apple, those devices are mass produced in gigantic proportions in the biggest Chinese factories, somehow Apple would not be able to manufacture enough to sell to whomever would want one?

This whole lining up deal is a situation designed by Apple’s viral marketing department.

This carefully choreographed gadget marketing/pricing ballet has turned Apple into the second largest company in the world, just 3 and a half years after the release of the iPhone. It’s really insane if you think about it. If not for the largest oil company in the world Exxon Mobile, Apple would be the largest company in the world, and most of Apple’s current profits and revenues come from their ARM Powered iOS devices, especially the iPhone.

So now Apple is doing a big push on the tablet market with iPad. And the iPad2 certainly has a nice Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor in there.

There are Android tablets like Archos 101 Internet Tablet released 6 months ago, that are lighter at 480gr vs 600gr, that have real mini-HDMI outputs built-in, real USB-host built-in, a real kick-stand built-in, and that still support more video and audio codecs (such as all DivX, MKV found on BitTorrents), with Flash support, real multi-tasking for 40% to 60% cheaper price than the ipad2.

In my opinion, Honeycomb is the first real Tablet OS. And I am pretty sure Honeycomb tablets will overtake iPad market share in less than a year, faster than Android overtook iPhone after the Nexus One release.

For some engineering resource/time allocation/prioritisation issues, Google chose not to allow much to happen with tablets with Donut, Eclair, Froyo and Gingerbread. Companies like Archos were left with the open source part of Android, doing the customizations they want, but for some strategic reason, they were left without the full support from Google. Google didn’t want Android Powered iPad and iPod Touch competitors to dominate the market in 2010. They thought they perhaps were busy enough dominating smartphone growth of that year, and gaining the full support by two dozen Smartphone makers in the process.

I think Google’s strategy is to simply let the Apple viral marketing people do their thing first, then get their better open and free software in gear, and riding on Apple’s viral marketing coat-tails, Google’s Android ecosystem can then provide the big push and rapidly dominate.

This is also a dance of technological disruption, and disruption of those disruptors. Google can’t be seen as encouraging the industrys too rapid change, while some companies bet their futures on the Open Handset Alliance, Google had to be careful and let the market move as fast as it can without hurting the feelings of the big partners who invest billions of dollars in this and want to see their investments safely recouped.

In any ways, look forward to the Android Honeycomb ecosystem taking care of making Android the top platform for tablets fast, and look forward to new designs to make tablets even more fun, more productive, and basically turn these gadgets into the user interface of the future of mobile computing for all the people of the world.

I’m on German Radio, DRadio Wissen interviews me at CeBIT about my video-blogging

Posted by Charbax – March 7, 2011
Category: Opinions, CeBIT

German National Public Radio reporter Moritz Metz interviews me (in English) for 6 and a half-minutes for radio channel DRadio Wissen (pre-ceded by a short bit by Chris Ziegler of Engadget talking about 1-man blogging operations like mine): http://wissen.dradio.de/cebit-blogger-reist-gadgets-hinterher.36.de.html?dram:article_id=8810&dram:audio_id=11295&dram:play=1 (direct mp3 download link)

DRadio Wissen is a science and knowledge National German Radio channel operated by public radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio out of Cologne.

Exciting!

Peter Sunde, co-founder of ThePirateBay.org and Flattr.com, at CeBIT 2011

Posted by Charbax – March 6, 2011
Category: Web, Other, Exclusive videos, Opinions, CeBIT

A few years ago, Peter Sunde together with a bunch of cool guys in Sweden started thepiratebay.org, which is kind of a fun site where people can find torrent files for all kinds of things. It has been in the media. There is a chance that you know about that site. Peter Sunde is very much involved in the politics around filesharing on the Internet, the politics of media and content, he has spoken at the european union and RIAA and MPAA have a bunch of lawsuits going after him and his team. He tried to buy a country once to implement freedom of filesharing rules there or to build a server farm there, but instead thepiratebay is hosted around the world and can never be shut down and nobody knows who controls it. Those guys are fun (read their Legal Threats page). What do you think about Copyrights, Piracy and those kinds of things? Write your opinions in the comments.

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30 more MWC videos to be uploaded starting tonight

Posted by Charbax – February 18, 2011
Category: Opinions, MWC

The Mobile World Congress press center closed 4PM on last day of the show (yesterday), and closed 7PM on each show day, making it nearly impossible for me to upload all my videos during the show, as I was constantly filming interviews and product demos from 8AM to 6PM each day, when show floor closes. I wish conferences like MWC would consider closing their press rooms, media centers at much later time, why not keep those open until 10PM or even later. I met many other video-bloggers complaining very harshly about them not being able to publish their videos during the show. We can’t find any fast upload speeds at hotels or any other place around Barcelona, and it’s the same in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Berlin, Hannover, conference organizers need to understand videos require a lot of upload bandwidth and that can only be found at press rooms, and thus they need to spend a 50€ or whatever is necessary to pay a security guard to keep that media room open until much later. Otherwise, the conference simply isn’t getting half as much video coverage published to the web as it could be getting. Conference organizers have to consider we video-blog in HD, and HD video files can be very large and thus require 10mbit/s or faster upload speeds for it to be workable. I met many other video-bloggers at MWC who simply gave up even trying to get their videos uploaded during the show. What is the point in organizing a conference if video-bloggers don’t have time to upload the videos with all the informations and news from all the exhibitors of the conference?

Except from the unfortunate early closing media center, this Mobile World Congress was probably one of the most awesome, most action packed conferences that I have ever video-blogged since I started video-blogging at CeBIT 2004. Look forward to many more videos to be posted here starting tonight.

Google TV seeks FCC regulation to start a WebTV revolution

Posted by Charbax – February 10, 2011
Category: Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Google, Google TV

Google may or may not soon be allowed to add Hulu Plus to its Google TV boxes, which may provide the Google TV boxes access to most of the TV shows and other content that currently is being blocked on Google TV by US TV Networks such as Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC and Viacom. Why would they want to block Google TV? Cause it’s the trojan horse that disrupts TV from within, once consumers are only one click away from any YouTube video, only one click away from all VOD, legal or illegal, once this is easy to use and available for all in a sub-$100 cheap ARM Powered Google TV box, this is when those 5-hours per day people watch TV start spending more and more of that time watching content that is not owned or controlled by these networks.

At the same time, something awesome is going on with Google and Sony vs Cable Networks and the Movie industry at the FCC. Arstechnica published this awesome article explaining how Google and Sony are supporting an FCC regulation called the AllVid system.

The trade association is trying to set limits on how easy it will be for devices like Google TV to access pay TV content and reassemble it into something that will reconfigure both television and the Internet.

That’s at the heart of the FCC’s proposal for an AllVid system, which Google very loudly supports. AllVid doesn’t exist yet, but the idea is to mandate an industry-wide gadget that you could plug into your broadband router and connect to your cable TV provider, then watch online video and pay channels through a variety of AllVid-friendly devices. Not surprisingly, Google and Sony love this idea, because it could transform the Google TV from just a neat product into a revolution.

Big cable hates the proposal, because that revolution could leave multi-video program distributors (MVPDs), if not in the dust, at least working in a far more competitive video environment.

Basically, what this could mean, is that content would be separated from technology. Content owners won’t be able to make exclusive streaming partnerships with one set-top-box maker and not be available on the other. What this means, is that Hulu and Netflix must be available on all devices and that there will be a standard user interface to access all those on-demand and streaming contents.

This probably also means that all of those TV Networks in the USA who are streaming their TV shows for free using ads from their websites, would have to provide all that content to all devices through standardized user interfaces. None of these content providers can choose to block any device from accessing any content, and the advertising and pay-per-view models will thus be standardized.

Big cable insists that the metadata used to create on-screen program guides is copyrighted. The Motion Picture Association of America protests that the AllVid idea would put studio content painfully close to sites like The Pirate Bay.

Program guides should not be copyrighted, that is ridiculous. Anyone should be allowed to list what is going to be on TV at any given time. And anyone should be allowed to list movie titles, directors, actors, plot and even display a poster for each of those contents.

The MPAA is correct, this will mean that pirated content will also just be one click away, but that will force content owners to allow for seamless access to all the contents either for free with ads or at very reasonable cost as pay-per-view. And this will also enable the next step for Government regulation, that is to standardize the all-you-can-eat subscription model so that one Global Licence cover the legal and free access to all contents.

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Motorola Atrix 4G to cost $3220 on AT&T ?

Posted by Charbax – February 10, 2011
Category: Laptops, Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, Opinions, Nvidia, Android

So the first reviews of this awesome “Best of CES 2011” device are reaching some blogs today including slashgear, bgr, crunchgear, engadget.

The talk on the blogosphere and on blogs.forbes.com is that the Motorola Atrix 4G will be $199 alone on 2-year contract, or $499 with the Laptop Dock on 2-year contract. I’m not sure what the Multimedia/Desktop Dock will cost, my guess is $199? (if someone knows the price of the multimedia/desktop dock, please post in the comments).

Notice, as most phones sold in the USA, consumers have to signup for a 2-year contract. I always think all blogs should make it a rule that all prices should include minimum and maximum pricing both unlocked, terminated (with early termination fees) and with those 2-year contracts.

AT&T 2-year contracts seem to cost approximately like this:

– $85 per month for 400 minutes of voice,
– $95 per month for 900 minutes of voice,
– $105 per month for Unlimited minutes of voice
with 2GB data and WiFi hotspot support. That’s between $2040 and $2520 for 2 years.

Total price of Motorola Atrix 4G (with both Laptop and Multimedia Docks) on AT&T for 2-years: between $2740 and $3220

This is not really new. Telco carriers are in the business of making tons of cash and money. This is business as usual.

Yet, as AT&T is making so many tons of money on the 2-year contract, I don’t exactly understand why AT&T doesn’t just give the Motorola Atrix 4G with both docking accessories at a more affordable price than something like this $700 upfront payment.

I mean, comon AT&T. Don’t you want to have some price competitive Android super phone options to destroy the iPhone now that your exclusive distribution deal with Apple is finished?

I’d hardly even consider the Motorola Atrix 4G for $499 with both Docks when the whole thing would be sold unlocked. I may be looking at a package for something like $1000 if I want it unlocked.

Anyways, it’s for sure Motorola still deserves “Best of CES 2011” award, no matter the pricing. Just because they are courageous enough to push the industry forward in terms of all-in-one ARM Powered device. It is understandable that Motorola wants to take ample profit margins on the accessories and not sell the laptop dock for $150 and TV dock for below $100 as they are supposed to. But for AT&T, well, it’s up to them. How fast do they want to sell these devices in the USA? If AT&T would sell the phone $199 on contract, and provide the accessories for $150 for laptop dock and $100 for tv/desktop dock, then they would have something really powerful to outsell the iPhone quickly and quickly get mass adoption. One can hope AT&T and the other carriers around the world who are looking into selling the Motorola Atrix 4G, that they all think hard about pricing, and that they bring the device with accessories to as many people as possible at some reasonable pricing.

Alcatel One Touch and Archos partner up for low cost Android Tablet and Smartphone combined data plans

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Tablets, Smartphones, Opinions, Texas Instruments, MWC, Archos, Android

Alcatel One Touch is one of the makers of cheap Android Smartphones such as the Alcatel OT-980 which is sold for only £99 on pre-paid plans in the UK. Alcatel One Touch is a brand of TCL Corporation, a $16.7 Billion valued Chinese consumer electronics company.

Alcatel One Touch’s partnership with Archos would enable an easy sharing of data from a low cost Android Smartphone using a ‘’One Touch Connect’’ button to share the 3G data automatically with the Archos tablet over a mobile WiFi hotspot. This may be a one-click process, and the carrier may be able to limit access of that WiFi hotspot only to the Archos tablet through Mac address filtering and not as a totally open or encrypted WiFi hotspot for use with other devices.

The idea is that one affordable subscription plan include the voice and data through the low cost Android smartphone as well as the low cost yet high-end Android tablet. This way, consumers don’t need to subscribe to more than one package. I think it can be expected that Alcatel One Touch will present a new range of cheap Android Smartphones at Mobile World Congress next week with this One Touch Connect mobile hotspot functionality built-in.

Here is expectation/guess/suggestion for a pricing model which I think would make this kind of offer a sure hit:

Pre-paid only, no contract: $299 for the basic 3.5″ capacitive Alcatel-OT Smartphone and the latest Archos 7″ capacitive tablet, both are on pre-paid and no contracts are needed, pricing for pre-paid should be below $30 per month for something like 300 minutes or unlimited use of voice and 3GB to 5GB of data per month to be used on the Tablet and the Smartphone. The 3GB monthly data hotspot may be open for other devices as well if the carrier wants to allow it. For example $10 to $20 extra per month it could open up the mobile hotspot to any other device and increase monthly limit to something like 10GB per month.

Phone alone on pre-paid no contract should be $149. Tablet alone no contract needed would be $249.

6-month contract, then pre-pay: $249 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $50 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

12-month contract, then pre-pay: $199 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $100 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

18-month contract, then pre-pay: $149 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more, $150 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

24-month contract, then pre-pay: $99 for the Smartphone+Tablet package, $30/month for unlimited voice/data to use on both devices or more. $200 early termination fee, lowered $5 each month.

What do you think of the idea to use a cheap Smartphone mostly for voice and basic apps and tether it with a larger screen Tablet, use all on one same low cost voice+data plan, and even have this work for pre-paid plans?

France: Archos has 22% Tablet marketshare

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Texas Instruments, Archos, Google, Android

According to French market analyst GfK, Archos is now the second biggest tablet maker on the French market, far in front of Samsung (4%), Toshiba (3%), Huawei, Viewsonic and others. Sure enough Apple has the biggest market share with 67%, but I think that’s mostly due to Apple having more cash for manufacturing and distribution. If Archos had been able to spend more money producing more units and having better stock availability at all resellers and never run out of stock during these past 3 months, then I think Archos would probably be number 1 in market share, even in front of Apple.

Source: archoslounge.net

As I run the biggest Archos fansite community at http://forum.archosfans.com and I have been publishing the earliest and most popular video reviews of Archos products for over 6 years, publishing the earliest and most popular videos of Archos full Tablet line such as the 70 Internet Tablet, 7 Home Tablet, 101 Internet Tablet, 32 Internet Tablet, 43 Internet Tablet, I may be biased. But I am sure that if all stores had enough Archos in stock to satisfy the demand for tablets over these past 3 months, Archos would sell even more than Apple.

What matters to the consumer is the value proposition. What features they can get for what price. Archos newest Gen8 Android tablets are about half the price of the iPad and provide more features.

Legalizing piracy and enabling better content creation through a Global Licence

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2011
Category: Opinions, Google

I was at this workshop at Lift11 where we brain-stormed the http://dontmakemesteal.com project which has been gaining media attention during these past few days on wired.com, heise.de, rawstory.com, gigaom.com, sueddeutsche.de, news.ycombinator.com and more. I was on the team in charge of writing the pricing model for this manifesto.

Here is what needs to happen for piracy to dissapear:

Everyone pays $5 per month to access everything. Everyone is then allowed to watch, download, stream any movie, tv show, music, ebook, blog post, download, install and use any application.

This has been called the Global Licence by French socialist party in 2005 when they tried to pass it through the French Parliament (but the law was then cancelled by Chiraq’s Government). I was since then a strong supporter of the Global Licence model and I even campaigned through video-blogging 450 videos for Segolène Royal’s presidential election campaign in 2007 in France to try to get this law passed in one major European country, which would likely then trickle over to be the standard online content law, the copyright/piracy fix for the world, a foundation allowing for the creation of much better content and a solution allowing for development of much better technological solutions to more easily consume all the best content.

The Netflix model may seem great on the surface, but the reality of a technology provider having to sign content distribution deals with all the content creators in the world is just not a sustainable model. There will be plenty of content creators who will have demands that Netflix cannot meet, and that means a lot of content is then not going to be available in certain markets. Having many separate and closed subscription plans is not a sustainable model.

The only true solution is a Government mandated blanket licencing pricing and redistribution model, thus the global licence tax, where everyone pays a small tax to legally access all contents.

$5 per month paid by everyone in the USA and Europe means $60 Billion per year in revenues through this model, that is probably largely enough to finance great content creation. The redistribution of this wealth would happen through decentralized and multiple measurers of popularity and quality of content. For example, Google can measure exact popularity and quality of YouTube videos, last.fm can measure how many times people listen to songs, Razorback and other p2p statistics systems can measure popularity of files on p2p networks. More such models of measurement of popularity and quality/ratings can be implemented once having such more precise statistics and ratings will be demanded.

The advantages of this model:

– The money can be distributed directly to content creators, skipping all intermediaries. The content creators thus are in control of their budgets, content creation is thus less influenced by the intermediaries.

– Technology providers can focus on providing better technologies instead of having to worry about acquiring rights for content. Technology providers can sell or monetize their solutions based on the cost of bandwidth and storage rather than having to monetize through complicated models.

– Consumers don’t have to think about where they can find which content based on who has the rights to distribute it. Consumers can just make a search for what they want, and they can download or stream it through any number of technology and solution providers.

googleartproject.com – this is why we need Quad HD screens and projectors

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2011
Category: Projectors, Displays, Opinions, Google

Here’s a new project from Google, to digitalize all the worlds art from all the worlds art galleries and make it freely available in ultra high resolution online: http://googleartproject.com

Picasa, YouTube and now also Google Art Project, all cloud services that are ready for Quad HD and beyond!

The usage scenario is something like this, have a slideshow of your favorite art from around the world displayed in Quad HD resolution in your living room sub-$1000 46″ Quad-HDTV.

Anyone with a 3megapixel photo camera or higher creates photo content suitable to be viewed on a Quad HD screen.

Anyone filming with upcoming RED cameras or other consumer camcorders to come that record 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K or more, all those deserve to be seen on Quad HD screen, and can be streamed from YouTube even!

Screen and Projector industry, please take this advice: Give up on 3D as soon as possible and make us some Quad-HD, 4K2K screens and projectors at the same cost as 3D!!! All it takes is a new faster processor to process the higher resolution!

Here are some of the Quad HD screens I saw at conferences during the past few years, every time I see content on a Quad HD screen, I am blown away:
JVC 4K2K Camcorder and TV at CES 2011
Samsung 3840x2160p 82″ LCD HDTV at CeBIT 2008
JVC 4K2K HDTV and Projector at IFA 2008

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What to expect from Mobile World Congress

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2011
Category: Opinions, MWC, Google

After the awesome CES last month, I expect an even better Mobile World Congress, from February 13-18th, I will post at least 50 videos here on http://ARMdevices.net showing you the best ARM Powered devices shown at that show. Here are some of the fascinating topics that I expect to film:

– Samsung’s ARM Cortex-A9 Orion processor with ARM Mali-400 graphics in Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy Tab2. Is it a 32nm process design already?

– Freescale to show first i.MX6 ARM Cortex-A9 reference board or even announce actual devices using it?

– Texas Instruments OMAP4 in actual products, more than just RIM Blackberry Playbook. I expect several phones and tablets will feature the 1Ghz OMAP4430 to be released by end of Q1 and they will probably show and announce devices with 1.5Ghz OMAP4440 for later availability.

– Google shows Honeycomb. Not just videos as they did at CES, but they actually allow everyone to play around with the UI. They should announce Google Music, an expansion of Google Voice for worldwide free VOIP usage. Honeycomb should bring open Google Marketplace for all tablets, for all devices, even laptops. I am hoping Google even announces Honeycomb for Rockchip, Telechips, MSM7227 as well. Honeycomb may be synchronized with the launch of Google TV on ARM as well, or at the least, Honeycomb Google Marketplace should work for Google TV screens. First showing of Chrome OS for ARM Powered laptops would be appropriate as well, full hardware acceleration demonstration for HD web browsing on all the ARM Cortex-A9 processors would be appropriate.

– Texas Instruments nHD Pico Projector could be demonstrated in several upcoming smartphones. Adding a built-in projector will be one of the coolest features of a modern smartphone.

– ST Ericsson U8500 ARM Cortex-A9 ready in Nokia’s next generation smartphone and tablet devices running Meego. But I also expect Nokia to announce and show a whole range of Android devices which I expect have been under development for a year.

– Nvidia to launch Tegra 2 1.2Ghz 3D edition with full 1080p all codecs high profile playback, faster multi-tab HD web browsing processing and they’ll announce and show some Tegra3 stuff as well.

– Qualcomm MSM8660, 8260 to be launched in range of new smartphones and tablets. This is Qualcomm’s big Dual-core Snapdragon processor design push. It may be huge and Qualcomm may dominate Dual-core smartphones as well.

– Marvell 628 Tri-core demonstrated in devices. May be the appropriate timing for them to show demos? Marvell in any case is powering the best example of ARM Powered laptop in OLPC XO-1.75 that should be shipping mid-year, and they certainly have some ambitious Marvell Armada XP ARM Powered server projects going on.

– Rockchip’s partners launch more RK2918 devices. Suitable for low-cost ARM Cortex-A8 tablet designs.

– New Telechips TCC8803 ARM Cortex-A8 designs for other low-cost tablet designs.

– It would be nice to test some Windows 7/8 ARM demonstrations. Microsoft can do a good job porting all the apps and fixing up all the necessary drivers. Let’s see what they have! It would be a nice surprise, but I don’t expect Microsoft to precipitate things too fast.

– Motorola releases Atrix 4G and Xoom by the show start. First Tegra2 phone that does it all and first Honeycomb tablet, so it will be fun.

– HTC releases their next generation Android phones and a tablet. It’s their replacement for Nexus One/HTC Desire/Droid Incredible. My wild guess is it could be based Qualcomm MSM8660 dual-core and include a HTC Tablet as well.

– RIM Blackberry demonstrates support for Android apps on the Playbook tablet. This way, they skip the need to start a whole new app marketplace from scratch.

– HP launches WebOS devices. Let’s see what it can do. I think HP will probably have to use Android though eventually. Hey, competition is always nice, but sometimes when a good open-source platform is free, everyone can just as well contribute to that same ecosystem and if anyone thinks they can make things better, they can fork it or demand the improvements implemented at the level of the Open Handset Alliance. HP did a beautiful ARM Powered laptop before in Compaq Airlife, I’d like to see them upgrade that with Qualcomm MSM8660 Dual-core platform and Honeycomb software.

– I’ll be looking for any demonstrations of platforms such as the Broadcom BCM2157 to enable cheaper Android phones. Sub-$100, how soon, how good.

What do you expect from Mobile World Congress? What would you like me to film in priority? Which questions should I ask to whom? You can also send me tips on what I should film at MWC to my email: charbax@gmail.com Do you agree or disagree with any of my expectations? Post in the comments.