Christopher Herot's Weblog

How Motorola Fell a Giant Step Behind

Friday's Wall Street Journal ran an article Dropped Call: How Motorola Fell A Giant Step Behind detailing Motorola's difficulty finding a successor to the highly popular Razr phone.  The story will be familiar to anyone who has read The Innovator's Dilemma or followed the spectacular rise and fall of the StarTAC which, according to the article, was such a success as an analog phone that it blinded the company to the shift to digital.   Similarly, the Razr was so popular that it delayed Motorola's move to the 3G phones that are now driving the market.  An additional complication was that when it spun off Freescale Semiconductor in 2003 it promised to purchase all of its cellphone chips from them for three years, but those chips were too large to fit in the slim phones that were becoming popular.

Now that the Razr has been widely imitated and sells for commodity prices, the lack of a 3G successor is hurting the bottom line.

For serious Motorola watchers, the article details much of the internal politics of the company, some of it gleaned from a recently settled lawsuit on an "unrealted matter."

 

Ticketmaster Sues RMG Technologies

The Hollywood Reporter reported  last week that Ticketmaster filed a lawsuit against RMG Technologies accusing it of selling technologies to enable 'bots to bypass Ticketmaster's security and purchase tickets in bulk for later resale.  Ticketmaster claims that one IP address made more than 3 million attempts to access their system.  Sounds like another automated mechanism to defeat the CAPTCHA that Ticketmaster uses.

The article says RMG is doing business as ticketbrokertools.com.  If you get what looks like an error page, read it closely.

Blackberry Addiction

There has been extensive coverage of Blackberry addiction in the wake of last week's service outage, but one of the more insightful pieces was Matt Richtel's piece in today's NY Times, Tethered; It Don’t Mean a Thing if You Ain’t Got That Ping.  It offers some notable quotations from academics, such as this from
James E. Katz, Director of the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University:

Look at a lot of the communication — it’s idiotic in terms of substance, but it’s vital in terms of meaning...It’s random reinforcement, [Participation gives people a sense of belonging, one traceable to the atavistic desire to congregate and cooperate for safety and survival. In addition, the constant checking is an exercise in optimism, like being an explorer or a gambler. Eternal hope delivered in tiny bits while you’re on the go.The fact that you don’t know when important news will come] means you will quickly engage in obsessive compulsive behavior.

And this, from John Ratey, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been using the term "acquired attention deficit disorder" to describe the condition of people who are accustomed to a constant stream of digital stimulation and feel bored in the absence of it:

I liken it to a drug.  Drug addicts don’t think; they just start moving. Like moving for your BlackBerry.

I wonder how long it will take people to get over it.  Back when I was at Lotus, my group built a product to deliver email to mobile phones.  It was useful for deleting spam while riding the Hertz bus at the airport, but with the volume of email I get now I can't imagine wanting to be interrupted every time a new message comes in.  I do often bring my laptop to meetings and do keep an eye on email, but can live without it while I go to lunch or hang out with family and friends.  On the other hand, some businesses are so competitive that a moments inattention can have unfortunate results.  I was needling a friend of mine about his Blackberry addiction and he recounted how he lost his job at a particularly cutthroat financial services company when a reorg took place while he was on a business trip.  He is convinced to this day that things would have turned out differently if he had gotten the news in real time.  Perhaps he's right, but I'd like to think some of this technology we are inventing would make people's live more fulfilling instead of more anxiety-ridden.

Twitter in NY Times

Jason Pontin wrote a long article on Twitter in the business section of today's New York Times entitled From Many Tweets, One Loud Voice on the Internet.  Pontin estimates that the service has over 350,000 members and "is one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet" but is skeptical, noting that "A little secretiveness is, perhaps, a necessary lubricant in our social relations."    That may be a generational phenomenon, according to Emily Nussbaum's article in the Feb 12 New York Magazine where she notes that the majority of 13-to-17-year-olds have a profile online.

Yet Another Leak of Social Security Numbers

The New York Times reported yesterday that a publicly accessible government database exposed almost 30,000 social security numbers.  While the SSNs have been redacted from the web site FedSpending.org, the original database has been in existence for more than two decades and copied thousands of times.  While this is definitely a cause for concern, I don't know why people are surprised by this kind of thing any more.  The problem is that SSNs have been used for two different purposes that should never have been combined.  SSNs were originally intended for tracking income for Social Security and tax purposes, but since they are the only universal and unique identifier assigned to US residents, it became convenient to use them as identifiers in other applications, such as drivers licenses, medical records, and credit reports.  Then they began to be used for a second purpose, which was as a password.  The theory was that if you knew a person's SSN you must be that person, which is obviously stupid if that number is widely distributed, as it was in an era where every merchant demanded to see it before accepting a check and where it was printed on every driver's license and medical insurance card.  There have been recent attempts to restrict the use of SSNs, but as this recent breach has shown, there are too many copies of too many databases to get that genie back in the bottle.  Perhaps the only real fix is a stronger federal law prohibiting the collection and use of SSNs for any purpose other than tax collection, and the automatic prohibition of any attempt to collect a debt where SSNs were used as a means of establishing identity.

Google Voice Local Search

Google has launched a free, experimental directory assistance service.  There are no ads, although it wouldn't be surprising to see them show up in the future.  You dial 800-466-4411  (800-GOOG-411) and get a robot that asks for the city and state, then the name of a business or a category.  (No residential numbers.)  As with many speech recognition systems, it can stumble on proper names (try Convoq) but it does a great job with categories (try Taxi or Pizza).  You can ask for the address by saying "details" or (my favorite feature) say "text message" to receive an SMS.  It will also connect you to the number free of charge.  Sure beat paying Cingular or Verizon for the same service.

Some other features:

• You can say punch in the zip code instead of saying the name of the city and state
• Press 9 or say "text message" to get the details
• Press "*" or "start over" to go back to the main menu
• Say "go back" just about anywhere

FCC Terminates Proceeding to Consider Dropping Ban on Cell PHones on Planes

Yesterday the FCC released a Memorandum Opinion and Order terminating the proceeding that was reconsidering its ban on use of cell phones aboard aircraft.  While there was an enormous (and mostly negative) input from the public on the issue, the FCC based its decision on narrow technical grounds - that there was insufficient data on whether airborne cellular use would overwhelm the terrestrial networks.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that companies such as AirCell  LLC are  still sanguine about providing WiFi service aloft.  According to the article, the speed will be "equivalent to WiFi service on the ground" but that voice services such as Skype will be blocked.  On the other hand "cellular service is the top priority in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, where social objections to cellphones on airplanes appear to be more muted."  Who knows?  It could still happen here.

MassNetComms Annual Awards Ceremony

At the Mass Network Communications Council awards ceremony tonight the following awards were handed out:

• Brian Roberts, Comcast
• Largest Private Financing - Optasite
• Largest IPO - IPG Photonics
• Network Communications Hall of Fame
  • Ray Stata
  • Bill Poduska
• Product of the Year - Riva Systems Tag Acquisition Processor
• CIO of the Year - John Glaser, Partners Healthcare
• Fastest Growth  (Small Company) - Acme Packet
• Fastest Growth (Large Company) - Comcast
• Best Performance in Public Markets - NaviSite
• CEO of the Year (Public) - Paul Sagan, Akamai
• CEO of the Year (Private) - Ashraf Dahod, Starent Networks
• Company of the Year  (Public)- Acme Packet
• Company of the Year (Private) - Starent Networks

In talking to Acme CEO Andy Ory I learned a little about how they came up with the name.  The Web site has a good explanation of the meaning, but they had been using the name in their PowerPoint deck before they actually made it the official company name.  When the check arrived from the VCs for their initial financing, it was made out to Acme Packet.  In order to deposit the check they needed to change the name of the company, which they did very quickly.  It looks like it was a good investment.

Baratunde Rafiq Thurston on the Macintosh Way

The Mass Network Communications Council held its annual awards ceremony tonight at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge.   The festivities opened with a hysterical PowerPoint presentation by comedian (and Harvard graduate) Baratunde Rafiq Thurston who poked fun at the way Apple fans summarily dismiss anyone who finds flaws in Apples products by accusing them of not being sufficiently aligned with the Macintosh Way.  An exceprt:

I'm a black dude who grew up in Washington, D.C. with its hometown "redskins" football team. That name is horribly racist and derogatory, at least according to many Native American tribes who have protested its use for some time now. I remember bringing this up in high school, and many of my friends would say, "no, it's not racist." Uh, excuse me, but the Native people say it is. "No, it's not."

Women are sadly familiar with this routine. If a woman is sexually harassed or even raped, often the first questions challenge what she was wearing or "doing there." The implication is that she either brought it on herself, or it didn't happen. "I got raped." "No, you didn't."

This is denying the validity of someone's experience, and I've come across it all too often on lighter issues involving technology. The Palm Treo is a fine example. Search the treocentral.com discussion board for people having problems. If you don't tow the party line, people actually personally attack you and claim that either what you said didn't happen or that it was all your fault. The "redskins" can't be racist, and that woman just misunderstood, and Apple isn't smug at all.

The comments I got on that piece were something else. I'll share:

The ads are what David does to Goliath. If you're with Goliath's crew, you'll find the ads annoying. We David's cheer when they come on.
As for your install, sorry. Macs are computers and sometimes they do fail and sometimes they do frustrate. If you're coming from the PC world, as I suspect you are, you may not yet understand the Macintosh way, which is to not overthink things.
A cross-upgrade? Does this require FCP to recognize the program you're replacing it with? I suggest reinstall the original program, then install FCP.

Best wishes,
Richard Taylor

Oh, now I get it. I'm with Goliath's crew. That completely explains why my installation didn't work. Clearly my mind is not yet prepared, and I must continue to study "the Macintosh Way" until I figure out how to not "overthink things." I would love for you to explain to me just how I overthought things. Seriously. I've been trying to figure it out, but I'm afraid I may be overthinking how I overthought the situation. Richard Taylor, I respectfully ask you to STFU. Are you kidding me? I follow the instructions, insert the DVDs as told, and the process fails. Somehow this is a reflection of my spiritual unworthiness. Oh please STFU!!

I love the smugness of Apple.
I'll go further, I love the ARROGANCE of Apple - that's what it is most of the time.
When things don't work - you're fairly certain it's your own fault, and it's up to you to figure out the solution - rather than screaming to the heavens that the people who sold you the machine screwed it all up.
So much of my ego is wrapped up in the elite cloud of Mac Zealotry that surrounds me that I REFUSE to let something not work on my Mac. I will make it work (or just declare that it isn't worth doing).
With Windows, I'm usually convinced it's a bug right away and give up because I don't have the slightest bit of my self-image wrapped up in whether or not Windows "just works".

- Steve

You really have to read the entire post on his blog.

Verizon vs. Vonage - Claim Construction

Thanks to Brough Turner, I have posted the claim construction for the recent patent case between Verizon and Vonage.  As I learned from my experience as an expert witness, claim construction is the painstaking process in which individual words of the claims of the patent are examined in the context of the specification of the patent in order to assign meanings to them, for example in this case deciding if "name" refers to the called party or to the called party's device.  Claim construction is a matter of law and is therefor decided by the a, whose decisions are rendered in the above-referenced document.  All the jury gets to decide is whether the claims (as so understood) are infringed by the defendant.  As Fred Goldstein has pointed out, the jury was not asked to decide if these patents are valid.  Good thing for Verizon, since the claims at issue are for looking up a name and returning an address, something that's been going on in the Internet at least since Paul Mockapetris invented of DNS in 1983.  I expect this will be in the courts for some time to come.