Android Phone

Finally, after talking a little bit about it I have the for the first time a Google phone in my hands.
Some months ago I had a HTC Dream locked to T-Mobile thanks to a friend, but I had no T-Mobile USA enabled SIM card to play with it so I had to be happy with "emulating" one and been able to play with the Wifi connection. I any case it was a nice experience and my first impression was that it was a nice OS, even though the handset was a bit bricky.

Now I have a HTC Magic unlocked phone, even though it is VF Germany branded, to play with it in my two weeks vacation in the States. I plan to acquire a prepaid SIM card and use it to access to Internet while travelling. I will travel also with my N95 but VF Spain roaming rate makes it very difficult to really explode it.
So, hopefully in some weeks I will have a brief report of my experience that I will be able to share here.

My new Dell Mini 9

Finally I did it and bought a fancy Dell Mini: 9? screen, 8Gb SSD and 1Gb RAM, accompanied by a megapixel Webcam, Bluetooth and Wifi connectivity and running Windows XP. What about WWAN? No way, the standard model from Dell website comes without one. Not only it comes without the Mini-PCI card but also lacks of the slot. I bought it barely used through eBay and it was a big deal for 170 euros. At the same time I bought a WWAN card for it, that cost me around 100 euros, before knowing that the Dell Mini had not the Mini-PCI slot. Now I know and what is more important, I know how to install one on the Wifi slot and connect an embedded USB Wifi on it. You can check how on this video.

So, once I realized I could not install the WWAN card on my Dell Mini I had to sell the card. Fortunately I did it for almost the price I paid for it, so now I am looking for the suitable WWAN card that may fit inside my Mini's back. Why do I want 3G connectivity? Well, I have used 3G external USB modems for some time with my laptop, and it was great, but with the Mini I can not imagine sitting on the train with the tiny netbook connected to an external modem. It breaks all the aesthetics of the Mini and most of the times I would forget the modem at home. As I commented some time ago I use a Simyo connection when I am traveling for pleasure, so I need an unlocked WWAN card in order to configure it to work with my Simyo. The other possibility I am considering is buying a Huawei e156 USB Modem and try to take the cover out, sold the USB PINs to the corresponding of the Mini-PCI slot and put it all under the back cover of the Mini. As soon as I have more info on the solution I will post it here.

The use of the Mini is great, it fits everywhere, weights around 1 kilo and the charger is slightly bigger of one of a mobile phone. For me this is an important point because if you have a 1 kilo netbook but the charger weights half a kilo it loses part of its sense! The battery performs well, although it does not reach the announced 4 hours, it is enough for a 3h+ flight from Tenerife to Barcelona. As you can check on the image it is great to work with it on the plane (even if you don't fly business ;-) ) so is ideal to bring it anywhere.

Mobile World Congress 2009, Barcelona

It is again here. The MWC 2009, the Congress of the Crisis, starts tomorrow. Today I have been in the booth as to check that everything was working correctly and I had a first impression of what was going in there. A lot of workers setting up the stands and changes in the presence of some exhibitors.
I will be in the G&D booth (Hall 8, Stand 8B65) these days and will try to meet as many people as I can and get first hand information of the industry. Forecasts say that there will be a fall in the number of visitors and also in the days of stay. Hope they are not very big and the Congress and the Exhibition keep the leading role they have in the Industry.
On the organisation, unfortunately this year was not included along the badge the four day ticket to use the public transportation system. Hope it is the only reduction in the reasonably good job that was done in the previous years and that the congress is celebrated here for some more years.

I will keep posting on the results from the MWC2009!

The MSc Thesis

The day arrived and last Monday I presented my master's thesis. It has been a long and tough way but now I'm happy with the result and with the stages that come along. Of course, I could do a better job if more time would have been available, but as mi adviser told me, it overtakes the standards of the task :-o . Nevertheless, this does not end here. Some opportunities have appeared now to apply the methodology and results to my day to day work and also positive perspectives arise on the academic field. A PhD? It is too early to know and I have promised my partner a period of relative rest.
Anyhow, and although this blog was started for the master, I hope to continue posting here the highlights (and down-lights) of my work, the random thoughts and the silly ideas that may appear in the future.

Mission (partly) accomplished!

The thesis work is more than fifty pages long and partly boring ;-) It is available here, and released under Creative Commons license, so if you enroll on having a look do it under your own responsibility, you are warned! Just kidding, any feedback is highly welcomed.

I post here the Abstract

The SIM card: An exercise of Technology Watch chasing state of the art and new opportunities.

The SIM card has become, thanks to its embedding in Mobile Handsets of GSM and other systems, the permanent companion of the subscriber and the more spread Smart Card of the world. In this work an exercise of TechnologyWatch has been done on the developments around the SIM Card along with a theoretical and literature review on the TW process. Technology Watch, and the broad concept of Competitive Intelligence, are introduced from a scholarlypoint of view and a review of literature on TW from the year 2003 to the present is done. This Theoretical Framework is then put on test with a Case Study about the SIM Card.
Using sources and data at three levels: Research, Development and Innovation and having in mind the corpus of the Technology Watch discipline, an analysis is done finding interesting knowledge, qualitative and quantitative, on the recent past and present development of the SIM card. This information is also used to do some prospect on the subject.
Some of the findings have been to identify the main publications at the research level, the Relevant International Patent Classifications and interesting sources for Market analysis for SIM Development. Moreover, a list of Institutions and Companies working in the subject is provided as well as the 2008 more published topics in the industry. The system and techniques used to do all this process are also described in detail.
This work is a start point in order to construct a system for continuous environmental scanning on SIM card developments as to detect weak signals and early trends to take advantage of them. Thus, it must be considered as a seminal work of a broader approach to Technology Watch in the SIM card business. It may be of interests of scholars, because the broad review on the literature, as well as practitioners, because the practical orientation of the Case Study, and managers of related industries because the information extracted from the data analysed.

Rural Internet

As I have commented in previous post I have switched my Telefonica ADSL connection to Tele2 and also have a flat rate with my Vodafone N95 so I can access my mail, facebook and all when on the road. Anyhow, when I travel on Holidays with my laptop, I have a Simyo SIM card to connect to the Internet and browse full screen and access some services that are quite uncomfortable to do it from the N95 screen.
Simyo offers a prepaid rate for 1? per day that is great for sporadic use, like mine. Just have to do a recharge every six months, from 10?, and that's all! Additionally Simyo uses the Orange Spain radio network to offer their services and, I think, maximun bandwidth is 3,6 Mbps, so it is a full HSDPA service.
Beside this, and as the idea of this post, is to introduce the test speed I have done where I am at present spending Christmas Holidays. After a week in Tenerife, I am in Touro. If you don't know where it is, don't worry, Google Maps does the job. It is a small town in the middle of rural Galicia. This territory is quite difficult to deploy good landline coverage so Mobile Internet is quite a good solution. Since I have been coming regularly to this place I have lived the different evolutions of the Mobile Networks services. From simple GSM circuit data services, limited to 9,6 kbps in early 2000's, to first GPRS deployments, UMTS and HSDPA. Anyhow, at present I am using a simple 3G Motorona E770v phone to connect, so bandwidth is theoretically limited to 430Kbps on the downlink. After the test, with full coverage indicated by the handset, I got the following values

They are not that bad, actually is like an early ADSL (256-64Kbps... remember? :-) ) and allow me to browse quite conveniently so I think it's a great and low cost solution to access to the Internet sporadically in a simple way.

SIM Machine

Today, at Luton Airport in London, I have found an interesting machine. It was a regular automatic can selling machine but instead of Coke cans it contained SIM cards and SIM Accessories! From cards of several European and Middle East operators, to a TurboSIM to unlock Nokia phones and SIM carriers...

This is one of the possibilities that the SIM card enabled and unleashed in the past, even without knowing, but that empower the mobile phones use and that increase the possibilities of users, and also of operators in most of cases, of using the technology to the most convenience for them.

One of the things that surprised me more was a SIM card of Orange Spain on sale in the machine. The point is that in Spain before buying a SIM card you must present your ID card and register it, so you can not be an anonymous user of a mobile phone for security reasons. This regulation stem from the Madrid bombings in 2004. Because this I wonder whether you can use the machine bought card directly from it or you have to do a previous activation in a physical shop in Spain, what would take convenience to the buy of the SIM card in the Airport...

Another of the most suprising items was the TurboSIM to unlock the Nokia phones... This simple device has become a common device and now not only Geeks use it to use their branded iPhone with whatever carrier!