Here are my own predictions for the 2010s:

1. Continued Convergence – Phone/Camera/Internet – Look for the decline of the “Point and Shoot” pocket camera as mobile phone cameras increase in quality to being on-par with smaller pocket cameras. Many pocket cameras already have miniscule sensor sizes that could fit into a cell phone device. A manufacturer will include this into a cell phone with an a new UI which will match P&S cameras for usability and customization. Internet will continue to grow in presence and utility on mobile devices.
2. Location Tracking Everywhere – Your device will automatically report to your friends where you are and what you are doing. Privacy controls will be built in to allow as much or as little sharing as possible, with many folks opting to disable the ability altogether. However, parents will still be able to “track” their kids.
3. Wireless Sensor Networks Will Become Ubiquitous – The continuing decline of the cost of these platforms will allow embedding in almost every imaginable place. Anywhere from road sensors to bridge monitors to traffic cameras will feature these devices.
4. The Rise of Data-Only High Speed Mobile Providers – Look for providers who provide plain high speed mobile access via WiMax or existing 3G/4G infrastructure. While the cost will be more than the current $30-$60 a month for current providers, the net-cost of mobile voice+mobile data will decrease because of the use of VoIP providers. Dual GSM/WiMax devices like the HTC Max 4G will become common.
5. Existing providers will fight tooth and nail to resist becoming “dumb pipes” – Much as with landline connections, existing wireless providers (specifically AT&T and Verizon) will fight for their lives using lobbiers and lawyers to prevent themselves from becoming a content-neutral data providers. They will provide shoddy mobile connectivity and blame it on technical restrictions to prevent other providers from piggybacking on their wireless data connections. Have you read your Terms of Service? They already prohibit anything other than Voice and Web, although I have almost never seen it enforced.

Do you have any predictions for the mobile world in 2020?

Update 10/27/2009: Google Voice now supports adding voicemail to any old cell phone number without the “Do not disturb” trick. Simply go into ‘Settings’, Enter the ‘Phones’ tab and then click ‘Activate Google voicemail on this phone’.  It will give you directions on call forwarding, which are the same as below, customized for your provider. Disable the “Do Not Disturb” setting to set your Google Voice account back to normal. Thank you Google!

For those lucky enough to have a Google Voice account, you’ll know the advantages: forward calls to multiple phones, visual voicemail and audio to text transcriptions. But, since you are not yet able to transfer your current phone number to Google Voice, it is hard to give up your old phone number and start having family, friends and business associates use your new Google Voice number. Also, there is the whole confusion as to your outgoing caller ID, which won’t match if you switch to Google Voice. Some phone platforms have developed software that will integrate your current phone with Google Voice, while others have taken the opposite route of banning them (I’m talking to you, Apple and AT&T!). But, here is the good news: You can switch, at least your voicemail, to Google Voice on any provider and any phone, right now.

Don’t have a Google Voice Account? Google is not yet handing out invites to the service, but you can sign up to be requested into the program here.

To make this magic happen, we are going to utilize a feature that all cell phone networks, and even home phones, have – called “Call Forwarding”. This setting is used to tell the cell phone network what should happen when someone calls you in several situations: when your phone is off or otherwise unreachable, when it rings a certain amount of time with no answer, and when it is available but you are currently on another call. These situations are also known as “Conditional Forwarding”, and their names are: unreachable, not answered and busy.

Follow the two ridiculously easy steps below on How to get Google Voice working to replace your old voicemail account:

Step 1: Enable “Do Not Disturb” in Google Voice. Depreciated, See note above

In your Google Voice settings, go down to the “Do Not Disturb” setting and check it off. This makes it so it does not ring out when the number is called, it will instead send any calls to your number directly into the voicemail box (and therefore have it transcribed and sent back to your cell phone number as a txt).

Step 2: Forward Your Voicemail to Your Google Voice Number

On your Google Voice homepage, you will see your number at the top left. Write/copy this down because you will use it shortly. The next step depends on which provider you use. Since Google Voice is currently United States only, I will only include call forwarding directions for major U.S. providers below. Include a “1″ in front of the number to indication that it is a US Number you are calling to.

How to use the chart below. Find your provider. Each provider has 2 numbers listed. Your phone may also have a shortcut designed to modify these numbers, if it has this feature feel free to use it. After typing the number, hit “send” to activate it. You should receive a message or tone that indicates your command was received.

For other providers, please contact or call technical support, and ask about “Conditional Call Forwarding” and check for any fees.

After setting this up, all voicemails will now be directed to your Google Voice inbox. For even further integration, there are some options available, depending on your phone. If you have an iPhone check out GV Mobile, only available on Cydia, for excellent Google Voice/iPhone Integration. If you have an Android based phone try “GV” in the Android Market.

Let me know your experiences with setting up Google Voice! Does it work well or would you recommend it to others?

I was looking for something that did not involve signing a contract, but Verizon, Sprint and AT&T’s offerings were pretty expensive. They typically have a “small” data plan, around 250 Megs of transfer for a smaller fee, or an “Unlimited” offering for a fairly expensive rate, around $60 a month for most providers. The Cricket plan I signed up for is an “Unlimited” – read 5GB – plan for $40 a month, with no contract.

Cricket Wireless is relatively new in my area (Philadelphia), having only started providing service in March of 2009. They have been in other markets since 1999. Wireless Broadband has been an offering of their since 2007. Cricket is a subsidiary of Leap Wireless.

The way the “Unlimited” plan works, and why I need to use quotes on Unlimited, is that you get a 5GB quota, and then the speed your connection can be severely restricted to limit your bandwidth consumption. This connection, according to the Acceptable Use Policy you sign when signing up, is meant for “web only” or e-mail traffic; meaning that it is not supposed to be used for streaming video or music (up or down).

The Device

The USB Broadband Modem I purchased is the Cricket A600. It was available on sale for $20 after rebate, which I thought was very reasonable considering you are not purchasing a contract with the modem. Usually providers will give you a roughly $200 price break on the modem if you sign up for a 1 or 2 year contract. This makes their offerings seem cheaper, even though you pay it in the long run.

Costs

Like I have alluded to previous, the big draw for the Cricket network is the cost of the unlimited package, $40 a month with no contract. There is a $25 activation fee. I would assume that this fee applies whether you are starting a new line of service, or if you allow your pre-payment plan to expire; necessitating a re-activation.

How does it work?

The way the modem works is when you first plug it in, it is recognized as a flash drive and the drivers are installed via Autorun. It currently only supports Windows and Mac OSX; their site specifically states it does not support Linux, although there are instructions on how to get the A600 working in Ubuntu. I am currently using the Windows 7 beta, it did not install correctly automatically – I had to manually install the device drivers using the setup file, and then the modem was installed and found on the next insert. So, even with a few hiccups, the A600 is ready for use on a number of operating systems. You can see the number of devices that are installed when you plug in the modem (Windows 7 screenshot):

As a bonus, the modem also works as a MicroSD card reader. This does not really help you if you do not have a MicroSD card laying around, I happed to have a 2GB one that plugged in and works as advertised. This might be a good thing to have if you are a travelling technician, you could place your thumbdrive programs on this device and have a ready-to-go connection and troubleshooting device.

The Connection

Connectivity is provided by “dialing in” to the Cricket network using their provided application, as seen below:

The program has a few functions:

• Connect/Dial In to the network
• Keep track of incoming/outgoing text messages
• Bandwidth manager (did not work on Windows 7)

The program seemed to work as advertised and the big connect/disconnect button is easy enough for the most inexperience internet user to understand.

The Network and Speed Tests

The Cricket Broadband network looks like it piggybacks on the Verizon or Sprint EVDO data networks. So chances are if you do not have these networks available, you would not get Cricket to work either. I had connectivity results that I had expected, in areas that are highly populated I had excellent connectivity (4/4 bars) and at other locations “in the sticks” I had only 1 or 0 bars. I was able to get connection in most places, even if the signal was very poor.

The data network always read “EVDO Rev A” which has a maximum “burst” rate of 2.45 Mbit/s to 3.1 Mbit/s. I tested in many locations; my speed with a “full” connection averages about ~ 500kbps download and ~ 200kbps upload. With a 0 or 1 bar connection I was still seeing a 500kbps download but a paltry 70kbps upload. Don’t expect this connection to replace your home broadband or wifi connection, it was pretty much impossible to watch a YouTube video, the same with any sort of multimedia content. You may be able to stream a highly compressed music stream. SSH, FTP, SFTP all seemed to work – one of my concerns being a system administrator was that these ports would be blocked, but I seemed to have an unfettered connection. I did try Logmein, on my “weak” signal it did not seem to want to connect but worked pretty well with a full signal.

Another thing I seemed to encounter with a poor signal was loss of connection. Since you are basically dialing in (my wife exclaimed, “I haven’t dialed in for 10 years!”) if you lose the signal for a few moments you get disconnected. It is not horrible, because you can reconnect, but the Cricket dialup program did not give me a notice or sound an alarm, I just started getting “Page not accessible” errors in my browser. If you are connecting in an area that has a poor signal, expect to be frustrated with your Cricket connection. It is not necessarily their problem, but it is worth mentioning.

Your connection locally is issued a private network in the 10.100.x.x range. Ping times varied from 80ms to 120ms. Do not expect to be able to do online FPS gaming from this connection. For your perusal is a traceroute from the Cricket connection in Ocean City, NJ to www.yahoo.com.

  1    61 ms    59 ms    65 ms  172.30.218.x
  2    60 ms    65 ms    66 ms  172.28.49.x
  3    64 ms    66 ms    57 ms  172.16.8.x
  4    70 ms    73 ms    64 ms  ge-8-16.car1.Philadelphia1.Level3.net [4.78.152.249]
  5   172 ms    68 ms    70 ms  ae-7-7.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.133.162]
  6    73 ms    65 ms    72 ms  ae-62-62.csw1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.146]
  7    83 ms    70 ms    82 ms  ae-61-61.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.134.129]
  8   102 ms    89 ms    91 ms  ae-2.ebr3.Atlanta2.Level3.net [4.69.132.85]
  9   119 ms   106 ms   107 ms  ae-7.ebr3.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.134.21]
 10   110 ms   138 ms   108 ms  ae-41-90.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.69.145.195]
 11   104 ms   102 ms    98 ms  YAHOO-INC.car1.Dallas1.Level3.net [4.79.180.2]
 12   102 ms   149 ms   104 ms  ae2-p130.msr2.mud.yahoo.com [216.115.104.93]
 13   102 ms    99 ms   100 ms  te-9-1.bas-c2.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.193.11]
 14   110 ms   103 ms    98 ms  b1.www.vip.mud.yahoo.com [209.191.93.53]

Conclusion

When all is said and done, you have to appreciate that having this little device and signing up for the Cricket Broadband service, for $40 a month and no contract, gets you an internet connection wherever you go, at least wherever you have signal. Although I suspect that a direct Verizon, Sprint or AT&T broadband connection would give you faster access, I do not think it would expand your coverage and you would pay a lot more for it. Cricket gets you a decent connection for a fair price, and I think that is worth it. If you are expecting a wired connection speed then look elsewhere, but as long as your demands are reasonable, you should be happy with Cricket Wireless Broadband.

I would recommend this modem to anyone who is looking for a web connection that is extremely portable and inexpensive. As long as your bandwidth demands are not exceedingly high, you should be happy with this modem.

Update 2009/7/20:

If anyone has clarifications on whether Cricket Wireless owns their own equipment (from tower to net) please let me know. I would just assume they ‘resell’ Verizon, Sprint or other “1st tier” provider wireless towers instead of building their own, which would be very expensive.

Also, I discovered you do not need to use the applet they provide to log into the Cricket wireless network. On Windows 7 at least, you can dial in directly with Windows’ Network Connection Center.

The problem is that IM networks need to remain connected – a ‘heartbeat’ signal is sent over the network to ensure the client is still online, and so that if you receive any instant messages they are delivered to you, well, instantly.

The reason text messages do not eat up battery life is because the cell phone network does not require your phone to have a heartbeat data connection to the cellular network – if a text message is sent to you, your phone picks it up when it communicates with the cell phone towers over the “control connection” – which all cell phones use to keep track of which cellular tower it is in range of (for more information on how SMS text messages work, see Howstuffworks).

Apparently this problem is due to IPv4 and how most devices use Network Address Translation to route traffic to your phone. This is where your phone has a private IP and keeps a connection open with a main server, using a keep alive signal, to maintain connectivity. According to this talk from Nokia, IPv6 solves this problem since there are enough IP addresses to assign each device a unique one. No longer will they need to juggle this IP, meaning that there is a substantial savings in battery time.

It can’t come a moment too soon. This has really made me look forward to the coming IPv6 transition. Even though IPv6 is a few years away, services are slowly coming online and eventually a ‘critial mass’ will propel adoption of the new protocol across all installation.

To begin with some definitions, there are 2 ways that you typically connect to a phone for internet. Bluetooth DUN (Dial Up Networking) and Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network). Bluetooth DUN is the “old” way to connect, and some of the updates Microsoft is pushing out to their Windows Mobile devices are disabling it. Unfortunately, this is the way that the N800 uses to connect to the internet.

To fix this problem, some maemo hackers put together a package called “maemo-pan“. This package enables the ability to connect to a bluetooth PAN and use the shared internet. The announcement and directions are here. In summary:

• Go to the system preferences and add your phone in the phone settings. Do not enter the wizard for configuring the dialup settings. PAN does not use them.
• Start internet sharing on your phone. It depends on your phone how and where to do this. On Windows Mobile 5, open the Start menu and select “internet connection sharing” from there.
• Make sure that Bluetooth is enabled on your internet tablet. Now open the connection dialog and you will see that there is a new connection called “Bluetooth-PAN”. Select it and you will be connected to the internet via PAN.
• When you’re finished, just close the connection the usual way. Wasn’t this easy?

Now on the 8525, this didn’t work for me flat out. I was using rom named “vp3G” which was Windows Mobile 6.0 which was released before the official AT&T one. I don’t know if this was causing my problem or not. I couldn’t get the N800 to find the 8525. I could get the 8525 to find the N800 but I still could not get bluetooth pan working.

I decided to flash the 8525 to a new cooked rom, because it had been several months since I had done so. To hedge my bets, I picked a ROM that included the old Bluetooth DUN package. There is an excellent webpage with far more information than I could provide on the subject of Flashing your 8525/Hermes – see MrVanx’s ROM Flashing Guide here. I chose Schap’s WM6.1 4.40 ROM. After the flash was complete – I tried to pair the two and had much better results.

I first paired them and it seemed to take this time. After that, I click “Internet Sharing” in the Programs on the 8525 and enabled it. Then I went onto the N800 and selected “bluetooth-pan” as the type of connection. Voila – it worked! I was surfing on a nice 3G connection. So for anyone out there trying to get this work without success – keep trying! It definately works but takes some configuration.

On a side note – being able to access an internet tablet via SSH is very cool. Here is top while playing Borat:

Mem: 124908K used, 1920K free, 0K shrd, 8K buff, 39452K cached
Load average: 1.56 1.20 0.98
PID USER STATUS VSZ PPID %CPU %MEM COMMAND
1574 user RW 26000 1573 69.7 20.4 mplayer
742 root SW< 15132 331 5.5 11.9 Xomap
864 root SW< 2176 331 2.3 1.7 esd
1573 user SW 11788 1 1.1 9.2 atabake
1592 root RW 1960 1578 0.9 1.5 top
1556 user SW 24556 1 0.3 19.3 python
788 root SW< 0 6 0.3 0.0 dsp/0
594 messagebus SW< 2428 331 0.1 1.9 dbus-daemon
1018 user SW< 40840 943 0.0 32.1 maemo-launcher

CABviaActiveSync is a simple, free program that adds a context menu to automatically parse the cab file on your desktop and install it via activesync. This can save you a bunch of steps and is incredibly handy if you are like me and are always installing/uninstalling programs to check out.

Download CABviaActiveSync from Modaco.

Even though all messages in an account are read; the “1 unread message” message still shows up on your Today screen. This happens when the internal unread message count becomes de-synced with the real message count. Instead of polling the server for unread messages, Windows Mobile keeps an internal database/registry key with this number. This problem also manifests itself in having “-1″ unread messages or another off-count.

Luckily, it is pretty easy to fix. Download this program from freewareppc. Transfer and run the .exe from your device. It analyzes your accounts and fixes the internal database “unread” count.

That is great that they are developing this and I applaud them for their efforts of releasing updates on mobile devices.

Now, maybe I have iPhone envy, but wouldn’t it make sense to release this for Windows Mobile since the market share that Windows Mobile has is MUCH greater than iPhone? According to Gartner, Windows Mobile shipped a little over 3 million devices in the 1st quarter of 2007 alone (and that number does not even include “Smartphone” devices). iPhone, according to their own estimates [MacNewsWorld], will sell a million units by Sept 30th.

I asked Meebo about their plans for Windows Mobile. Here is the response I received from Sue:

As far as a Windows Mobile version of meebo, it’s
something that we’ve thought about and are interested in, but at the
moment we don’t have development time and resources to add support for
every device we’d like to.

Here is where it gets tricky. There may be a great market penetration for Windows Mobile – but it is not easy to develop a web app for it because there is no standardized browser platform. Sure, you have Internet Explorer Mobile, but let’s face it – IEM is program is not very good at rendering web pages and would be a nightmare to develop for. Each version of Windows Mobile has differences in IEM that designers would have to be conscious of. The other browsers that Windows Mobile users have the option of using: Opera Mobile, Netfront, Minimo – do not have enough market penetration to make it development worthwhile. [on a sidenote, Opera Mobile is the best browser for Windows Mobile, give it a try if you haven't already.]

Hence, we have the major difference between Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. Windows Mobile, although an “open” system that allows developers to create their own programs, has the problem of having a high cost to develop because you need to have Windows Mobile programming experience.

On the other hand, the iPhone, with it’s “Closed” OS, has a standardized browser that works well and is easy to write web code for. Web publishers around the world are free to write code for it in their native programming languages because the browser is the component that renders the graphics and takes care of the network.

So how is this problem resolved? Nintendo seems to have fixed this very same issue by offering Opera for Wii via the Wii Shop channel. Wii users who install this browser have many options available out there for web interfaces that are designed specifically for the Opera browser on Wii – most notable of these is Orb, which has a beautiful interface for the Wii. Microsoft, ever the profitable company it is, wants users to use IE on Windows Mobile and therefore bundles IEM.

Microsoft needs to get with the program and make their browser easier to write for and more standards compliant. If that doesn’t happen, then we are definitely looking at an iPhone future for mobile devices.

If you use Windows Mobile, please contact Meebo and let them know that you’d like to see a Windows Mobile version of Meebo!

The issue is that PIE is trying to connect to the internet via a proxy, however if you are using WiFi there is no need for this and the proxy server can not identify you since you are not on AT&T’s (Cingular’s) network.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings]

The default setting that forces the proxy to be used is:

"EnableAutoDetect"=dword:00000000

Change to:

"EnableAutoDetect"=dword:00000001

Do a soft reset on your device and PIE should now be able to access the internet again!

However with Windows Mobile 6 Professional and HTC’s “StreamingPlayer” software – playing YouTube Mobile videos, at least through PIE (Pocket Internet Explorer) is easy.

If you don’t have HTC’s StreamingPlayer – check here. After installing the software, you may also need to modify your registry in order to allow rtsp streams to be opened by the player. Here is a link to the registry entries you need to make – again courtesy of XDA-Developer’s forum.

Save the above text to a .reg file, and import to your device (for example, using RegEdit for WM6)

Hopefully if all went well – when you visit http://m.youtube.com, and click play video, the HTC player will launch and play the video. After the video is done the player will automatically close and bring you back to the browser.

Note that for the above to work, you need to either have wifi access or an unlimited data plan for your wireless account – because streaming video WILL take up a lot of data!

Update 8/8/2007:

Screenshots!

Main Youtube Mobile Screen on WM6

Video Page on WM6

Video Playing

In Landscape mode – you can see the quality of the video is not that great even over WiFi

For another great article on getting this working, check here.