mobile phones and the poor -- 2 stories

Digital Divide and mobile phones

Technologies of Cooperation

Posted by Jean-Luc at 02:45 AM

A great article in The Economist this week about Digital Divide and using mobile phones in developing countries: The real digital divide.

"(...) And when it comes to mobile phones, there is no need for intervention or funding from the UN: even the world's poorest people are already rushing to embrace mobile phones, because their economic benefits are so apparent. Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity supply and can be used by people who cannot read or write.

Phones are widely shared and rented out by the call, for example by the “telephone ladies” found in Bangladeshi villages. Farmers and fishermen use mobile phones to call several markets and work out where they can get the best price for their produce. Small businesses use them to shop around for supplies. Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in Zambia and several other African countries. Even though the number of phones per 100 people in poor countries is much lower than in the developed world, they can have a dramatic impact: reducing transaction costs, broadening trade networks and reducing the need to travel, which is of particular value for people looking for work. Little wonder that people in poor countries spend a larger proportion of their income on telecommunications than those in rich ones (...)"

77% of the world's population lives within range of a mobile network

Technologies of Cooperation

Posted by Jim_Downing at 11:58 AM

This article in the Economist says that "encouraging the spread of mobile phones is the most sensible and effective response to the digital divide".Further "plenty of evidence suggests that the mobile phone is the technology with the greatest impact on development.A new paper finds that mobile phones raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big in developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points".Whatever the merits are for this view are,the article points to the fact that"phones are widely shared and rented out by the call, for example by the “telephone ladies” found in Bangladeshi villages. Farmers and fishermen use mobile phones to call several markets and work out where they can get the best price for their produce. Small businesses use them to shop around for supplies. Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in Zambia and several other African countries".
The real digital divide

future of wimax

WiMAX, good for the planet, not for USA?

Reuters has a well reported, if slightly off target story on WiMAX. Even though tons of phone companies including Sprint and Qwest are trialing the emerging fixed wireless technologies, it is clear that the high cost of deployment and entrenched duopoly of cable and DSL service providers is going to prevent WiMAX from becoming a mass market phenomenon in the US.

“The WiMax market in other geographies will dwarf that of North America,” Forrester analyst Charles Golvin, tells Reuters, pointing out that it is a technology that makes perfect sense for “some parts of Europe and developing countries where broadband is not very common.”

In-Stat estimates that it would cost about $3 billion to build a nationwide network. Paying off the cost of the network would take too long. “Increased broadband competition, price compression and high subscriber acquisition costs threaten to drive margins ever lower,” In-Stat analyst Keith Nissen added. He expects only 3 percent of broadband users around the world will use WiMax services by 2009.

broadband penetration

Broadband Is Going to Go Boom

Published: February 24, 2005

eMarketer predicts that there will be nearly 70 million broadband households in the US in 2008.

"Convergence," once only a futuristic dream, is a growing reality in homes across the continent, and it is changing the character — product offerings and competitive alignment — of some of the most powerful corporations in North America.

eMarketer's new report, North America Broadband, explores the complex and evolving market dynamics that widespread broadband adoption is creating.

"The broadband market is no longer about only high-speed Internet access," says Ben Macklin, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the report. "A new market is being created, including voice and video — a market worth nearly ten times the value of the Internet access business alone."

eMarketer estimates that broadband households will grow at a compound annual rate between 2004 and 2008 of 19.4%. Broadband penetration of all households will grow from 23.1% in 2003 to 56.3% in 2008.

In terms of real numbers, eMarketer predicts there will be 76.9 million broadband households across North America in 2008.

As can be seen by comparative estimates in the chart below, eMarketer is more confident on broadband growth than other researchers.

The convergence in digital technology is already having a very real effect on the market.

"Telecom companies are offering video services, cable companies are offering voice services and the company that controls the broadband connection will largely control the future digital home," says Mr. Macklin. "The current scrambling for position is a precursor to the real battle about to begin between cable and telecom companies as they encroach on each other's traditional territory. 'You want a piece of me? I'll take a piece of you!' could well be the catch phrase of this new era."

Billions of dollars of revenue are in play. The business decisions that are made over the next 12 to 24 months will determine whether massive corporate entities — like dinosaurs or wooly mammoths — thrive, survive or disappear.

uncertainty chip

Business Week Online
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FEBRUARY 4, 2005

NEWS ANALYSIS :TECH
By Otis Port

Chips That Thrive on Uncertainty
As transistors shrink, consistent performance diminishes. Big problem? Not if Krishna Palem is right about the benefits of unpredictability
In an ideal world, all the transistors on each computer chip would be identical. Moore's Law -- the edict that says silicon power will double every 18 months or so -- could then continue on its merry, exponential way for three or four more decades. Semiconductor engineers would just need to keep trimming the size of transistors by roughly 10% a year.

In the real world, though, things are a lot more complicated. In fact, transistors are like snowflakes: No two are exactly the same. This variation hasn't mattered much so far, but that will soon change.

"In a nutshell," says Shekhar Borkar, director of research for Intel's (INTC) Microprocessor Technology Laboratory, "what's happening is that as transistors get smaller and smaller, their variabilty is steadily increasing. In the future," he adds, "two transistors sitting side by side, which you intended to make the same size, could look different electrically."

Looking different electrically is much more serious than a cosmetic blemish. It means haphazard variations in performance. The upshot would be unreliable chips -- and untrustworthy computers, cell phones, navigation systems, and other products built around silicon circuits. But, Borkar says, research at Georgia Institute of Technology holds "great promise" for solving this problem of unpredictable variability.

"LIVE WITH IT." Ironically, the problem is part of the solution, says Krishna Palem, director of Georgia Tech's Center for Research in Embedded Systems & Technology. If making silicon transistors with predictable properties is going to be impossible in 10 years or so, he says, "let's sink into a morass of uncertainty. Let's learn to live with it and see what we can do with unpredictability."

Palem recently unwrapped his first "live with it" prototype chip, and so far tests have confirmed his hunch that uncertainty can be turned into an asset. One benefit is reduced energy consumption. Gulping less energy not only trims heat generation but it also could prolong the recharge cycle of cell phones, handheld computers, and other battery-powered gadgets.

With Palem's chips, cell phones might keep going for weeks, not days. Typical energy savings, he believes, will be around 20%, but it could be much higher if an application could sacrifice speed to gain longer battery life. "There's a trade-off," he explains.

FEWER DOUBLE CHECKS. Similarly, excessive heat is now a major obstacle for speed-demon chips. To avoid melting copper circuit lines, some new chips are fitted with speed limiters. They prevent the chip from crunching numbers as fast as it otherwise could. A lot of this heat stems from today's deterministic approach to chip design, Palem notes. The chip gobbles large amounts of energy to be absolutely certain that each data bit is either a 0 or 1 at every step of a calculation.

However, if a chip can get by without all the double checks to assure absolute certainty, then energy consumption could be slashed -- and speed would get a simultaneous boost. That's the notion behind Palem's concept of probabilistic bits, or Pbits. As he puts it: "Uncertainty, contrary to being an impediment, becomes a resource."

Palem figures that Pbit chips could find short-term uses even before they're needed to address manufacturing variability. "The initial applications won't be in general-purpose computing," he says. That's where Intel's chips reign. "Instead, they'll be special-purpose, embedded applications."

GOOGLE'S EXAMPLE. Embedded chips are essentially microprocessors sans keyboards. These chips are buried inside TVs and stereos, kitchen appliances, motors, and, these days, most products that run on electricity. They're far more common than typical microprocessors. Indeed, every personal computer has several so-called microcontrollers. They're in the keyboard, the hard-disk drive, and the display. Most cars have a couple dozen embedded processors, and luxury models can have 50 or more, controlling the fuel-injection and braking systems, power windows, and dashboard displays.

So what kind of jobs could tolerate a smidgen of uncertainty? Palem ticks off a rather surprising list: digital-signal processing, medical prosthetics, database searching, robotics, face and voice recognition, computer-aided product design, and even financial and risk analyses. In short, virtually any task for which a pat algorithm doesn't yet exist (face recognition, for example), or those that already involve statistical methods (digital-signal processing in cell phones), or where the so-called problem domain is itself riddled with uncertainty (financial analysis).

"Google (GOOG) is a great example of what you can achieve with probabilistic techniques," says Palem. "They have to deal with tons of information but still provide you with a quick answer. So they need a fast search engine to do a huge amount of analysis, using statistical models, pattern matching, and probability searching. And Google does give you an answer quickly. But it's not a 'hard' answer" -- the one specific thing you wanted. Instead, he notes, "you get back this list of possibilities, ranked probabilistically."

WALL STREET APPLICATIONS? Palem is especially optimistic about Pbit-chip prospects for artificial eyes and ears in both robots and people. Computers are notoriously inept at recognizing even simple objects such as chairs, let alone faces. "Probabilistic chips might be able to learn to do a better job," he asserts. "They could also help improve impaired human vision and hearing."

Might such chips bring new insights to Wall Street? "Financial analysis would be extremely well suited for this," Palem predicts. Then he clams up. Whether any Wall Street firms are getting regular briefs on Palem's research, as Intel and IBM (IBM ) are, he won't say. Wall Street doesn't like people blabbering about technology that promises a competitive advantage.

What is known is that it'll be a while before any of Palem's visions emerge into the light. He figures he needs at least a year to design and validate a more sophisticated chip. But if that chip checks out, it could kick-start a new silicon revolution.


Port is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York

Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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VoWiFi

February 3, 2005

WHAT'S NEXT

Phones to Use Wi-Fi Instead of Cellular Systems, or Both

By ANNE EISENBERG

ODAY people take laptops to wireless hot spots in coffee bars and airports to check their e-mail messages and to explore the Internet. Soon they may pack a new type of telephone and take it along, too, to make inexpensive calls using those wireless connections.

The phones are called voice over Internet protocol over Wi-Fi (or, simply, voice over Wi-Fi) handsets. Like conventional voice over Internet protocol, or VoIP, services, they digitize the voice and send it as data packets over the Internet. But they do it wirelessly, over an 802.11, or Wi-Fi, network.

And also like conventional VoIP, the technology may become popular with people who want to economize on their long-distance bills by using Wi-Fi connections when possible. "If you make a large number of calls, it could save money," said Philip Solis, a senior analyst at ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y., and author of a report on prospects for the technology.

Wi-Fi handsets will soon be common on the consumer market, Mr. Solis said. "Probably we will see dual-use handsets that are cellphones as well as voice over Wi-Fi."

Vonage, a company that offers VoIP service, will soon sell portable Wi-Fi handsets that people can use at public access points or on wireless networks in their homes and offices as an alternative to cordless phones. Vonage, which is based in Edison, N.J., expects to offer the handsets by midyear, its chief executive, Jeffrey Citron, said.

The price for the phone is not yet set, he said, "but it will cost something comparable to a cordless phone, between $75 and $100."

Vonage has 400,000 customers who use its VoIP service, Mr. Citron said. Some programs offered by the company offer unlimited calling for a monthly fee of about $25. Customers with the service could use their wireless handsets to make additional calls at no cost at access points besides their homes. "Why not take your handset with you and make unlimited phone calls from other places?" he said.

Vonage is testing the handsets now, and will soon be conducting a larger trial, Mr. Citron said.

Dual mode handsets, which can use voice over Wi-Fi and cellular services, are also appearing, Mr. Solis of ABI said. These phones are designed to work as cellular handsets when, for example, people are driving, and then switch to a local area network as people enter a building and transfer from the cellular network to Wi-Fi.

Such dual mode phones have many advantages, said Martin Fichter, a vice president for product management and engineering at Siemens Communications, in San Diego. "We believe that voice over I.P. over Wi-Fi is a big growth field for the future," he said, in part because such calls would reduce traffic on cellular networks, saving money for carriers by delaying the need to build more cellular capacity. "The call is being connected through the Internet," he said, "so everyone wins."

Wi-Fi Internet telephony could also lower expenses for the office staff of a company. "If we set up a Wi-Fi connection in the office, our handsets could go through Wi-Fi and save money," he said.

The dual phones may also benefit consumers who have poor cellular reception where they live. "It's a way to leverage voice over I.P. to reach people in many homes in the U.S. where cellphone coverage is not optimal," Mr. Solis said. "If someone calls you on your cellular number, you can get connected by broadband inside the house." Then customers could move to cell coverage outside.

Motorola is developing a dual mode handset for business customers that will let users have one number for both cell and broadband handsets, said Bob Duerr, a director of product marketing for the company. "Call my extension and the phone will ring whether I'm at the desk or on the cell network," he said. The system should also be able to transfer calls seamlessly between the cellular and Wi-Fi networks.

Jane Glover, marketing manager for Motorola's development of the dual network system, said the company was in the final stages of testing and fine-tuning, and that the system was just about ready for business customers. The Motorola handset and supporting systems, developed with two other companies and offered for sale through one of them, Avaya, is not meant for public Wi-Fi access points, because of potential security issues.

Dan MacDonald, director of marketing for Nokia Enterprise Solutions in White Plains, N.Y., said the popularity of voice over Wi-Fi was just beginning.

And however awkward its name - Mr. MacDonald prefers voice over I.P. over wireless LAN - the technology will soon be widespread. "It's an absolute certainty in our minds that it will happen," he said. "In the future, literally every mobile device will have Wi-Fi capability in it."

E-mail: Eisenberg@nytimes.com

Current tech trends heading into 2005

'05: Think hot zones, hybrids and VoIP

It's that time of year, folks. Time for the Mercury News technology reporters to cross our fingers, draw a deep breath and predict which technologies will be hot in the coming year -- which, given the pace of innovation, can be akin to correctly guessing the number of gum balls in a jar.

The good news is we'll be more accurate at predicting the future than, say, your horoscope.

The dominant theme of 2005 is cutting the cord. We expect millions of people will dispense with traditional copper-wire phone service and embrace the notion of making calls over the Internet. The technology is known as Voice over Internet Protocol. And it's going to be big.

Similarly, the ability to connect wirelessly to the Internet will expand beyond localized ``hotspots'' at the airport, Starbucks or Kinko's. This is the year high-speed wireless access will blanket whole city blocks, suburban neighborhoods and corporate campuses, as we move toward something called WiFi hot zones.

In the near term, expect cellular phones to begin capitalizing on high-speed wireless Internet access, or WiFi. Prepare for the emergence of China as a force in domestic computer sales, with the sale of IBM/'s PC business/ to that country's largest computer maker, Lenovo Group. And, on the home front, watch as cable subscribers embrace the digital video recording technology pioneered by TiVo and ReplayTV.

Here's our list for 2005.

1: Internet telephone calls

No longer just for gadget geeks, phone calling over the Internet -- known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP -- is going mainstream, driven by consumer market entry of such telecommunications giants as AT&T and entertainment heavyweights like Comcast.

The VoIP market could double over the next year from about 700,000 subscribers to more than 2 million as the required broadband connections become more commonplace in the United States.

The digital packet-switching technology behind VoIP delivers calls more efficiently than the traditional circuit-switched phone network. VoIP isn't subject to the regulations and taxes on traditional phone service. And it allows consumers call-anywhere plans for $20 to $30 a month plus features like automatically forwarding calls to a home or cell phone.

VoIP also will benefit from the continued growth of cell phones, as consumers consider them sufficient backup for a VoIP landline.

2: It's a wireless world

WiFi hotspots are everywhere. Get ready for WiFi hot zones.

WiFi -- short for wireless fidelity -- uses radio waves to allow people with laptops or handheld computers to get high-speed access to the Internet.

Last year, people began logging onto their computers over wireless Internet connections, called hotspots, in coffeehouses, airports, businesses, even at the ball park. They also untethered their computers in their homes, creating home networks that allow access from the couch or the backyard hammock.

In 2005, we'll see the rapid spread of Internet ``hot zones'' -- larger areas such as city blocks or even neighborhoods with wireless coverage.

The zones will give users more freedom to move without losing their connection and will also get around the bottlenecks of traditional WiFi by letting data move along several different pathways to get to the Net.

Of course, the technology won't do anything to address the etiquette issues of Internet everywhere. And you thought BlackBerries were annoying.

3: China sells PCs

If China has for many years been the world's low-cost factory for desktop PCs sold by big U.S. brand names like Hewlett-Packard and IBM, 2005 could be the year Chinese companies cut out the middlemen to sell PCs under its own brands.

China's largest computer maker, Lenovo Group, acquired IBM's PC division earlier this month. That opens the door to China selling its PCs directly to U.S. consumers.

Until now, the computers made in China by contractors and joint-venture partners have carried all the major U.S. brand names: HP, Dell and IBM. Components for rival brands are often produced on the same assembly line.

If Lenovo is successful in convincing U.S. consumers that China can make quality PCs -- first under the IBM brand and then under its own -- the floodgates could open for China's electronics industry.

But even the biggest China boosters have a hard time imagining Chinese doing what the Japanese, the Koreans and the Taiwanese have never been able to do -- beat the United States at innovation in microprocessors and software operating systems. The future seems secure for Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Microsoft.

4: DVR

Digital video recorders are much more than a way to record your TV football games and soap operas so you can view them at a convenient time -- they will reshape the way television programs are created and delivered.

Invented five years ago by two Silicon Valley companies, ReplayTV and TiVo, DVRs are poised to enter the mainstream in 2005 as cable companies finally catch up to their satellite TV rivals in offering set-top receivers with built-in hard drives.

Comcast shook up the Bay Area market earlier this month by announcing availability of its DVR box that can hold 60 hours of standard television programming or 15 hours of high-definition TV. Subscribers pay nothing up front for the Comcast box, unlike satellite TV and TiVo, and pay $10 a month for DVR service -- equivalent to what competitors now charge.

By the end of 2004, 6.5 million households in the United States will own a DVR, according to Forrester Research, about 6 percent of the 108 million U.S. households with a TV.

Expect a lot more people on board with DVR in 2005.

5: Cell phone appliances

Cell phones will converge with all kinds of technology appliances in 2005. They will combine with slicker digital cameras, personal digital assistants and even WiFi networking, to form almost-all-in-one communicators.

Already, sales of camera phones outnumber the worldwide sales of digital cameras. In addition, smart phones such as PalmOne's Treo enable users to load their address books into the phone and just click on a name in order to call the person. With brilliant color screens, cell phones are becoming entertainment devices, able to play games, videos and soon even digital television thanks to new chips from Texas Instruments.

With WiFi capability, phones will get true high-speed Internet access. Plus, WiFi will enable users to make calls over the Internet from inside their buildings, as long as they are within range of a WiFi antenna.

One day, users might roam from the cell phone network to a WiFi network on the same call as they move from outside to inside. But it will take many years to work out the kinks and to get all of these features into one device.

6: Hybrids go mainstream

Hybrid cars are poised in 2005 to expand beyond a niche audience, green-friendly geeks, to become a popular choice for the mainstream drivers of SUVs, sport wagons, pickup trucks and eventually even luxury sedans.

General Motors is selling two hybrid pickups, the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra. Ford will be selling its Escape compact SUV hybrid. Chrysler will sell Dodge Ram pickup hybrids to commercial fleet customers next year and follow with individual sales later.

In the meantime, the two hybrid pioneer manufacturers, Toyota and Honda, are still ahead of the pack in their hybrid sales. Toyota, Japan's top automaker, plans to sell more than 8 million hybrid vehicles worldwide next year. By 2006, Toyota will introduce a hybrid version of its luxury sedan Lexus GS.

Honda will be offering three hybrid models -- the original Insight, the Civic compact sedan and the Accord. To help mollify buyers peeved by the extra $3,000 the hybrid Accord costs over the gas-only model, the hybrid comes with heated leather seats, dual-zone automatic air conditioning and standard XM satellite radio.

7: File-swapping goes legit (so what?)

Two of the reformed bad boys of Internet file-swapping, Napster creator Shawn Fanning and former Grokster president Wayne Rosso, will launch a record-label-approved service early next year.

Rosso's new Mashboxx service will be powered by Fanning's Snocap technology, which distributes legally licensed versions of songs across peer-to-peer Internet networks and prevents the bootlegged music files from getting swapped.

The labels hope this will be the watershed event that turns file-swapping networks from pirate bazaars to legitimate retail channels.

But critics note that Snocap and Mashboxx face long odds for success. The technology would require the support of every major (and independent) label and every songwriter. Then it must face the formidable retail challenge that is Apple's market-dominating iTunes Music Store.

The even bigger hurdle is motivating millions of people to abandon free file-swapping networks, such as eDonkey, Kazaa or Morpheus, to adopt Snocap's filtering technology. That's unlikely.

The U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the matter this spring, when it considers whether file-swapping networks can be held liable for copyright infringement by others.

8: Satellite radio finds its frequency

Maybe it took the announced defection of Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed ``King of All Media,'' to give satellite radio some traction. Or perhaps it was something more mundane -- say, the growing number of automakers that offer satellite radio installed in cars, straight from the factory.

Whatever it was, satellite radio seems poised to hit orbit in 2005.

XM Satellite Radio surpassed 2.5 million subscribers this year, aided by its partnership with automaker General Motors. One in three GM vehicles sold comes equipped with satellite radio. And the automaker plans to offer it as an option on more than 50 car and truck models in 2005.

Sirius Satellite Radio, the network named for the brightest star in the nighttime sky, has played the underdog in the two-way satellite radio competition. But it gained a significant boost when it signed shock jock Stern in October, then snagged a respected figure in radio -- former Viacom president Mel Karmazin -- to serve as its chief executive. And it's lined up major auto partnerships with Toyota, Ford, BMW and DaimlerChrysler.

Stay tuned.

9: IPod, u2Pod, we all Pod together

If 2004 was the year of Web logs, those ubiquitous online personal essays that came to prominence during the presidential election, then 2005 is the year of Podcasting.

What's Podcasting, you ask?

It's a form of personal radio broadcasts that listeners grab from Web sites and download to their iPods (see, the name makes sense now) or other portable MP3 players.

Many Podcasts have the rambling, unfocused feel of blogs. And it's still an admittedly geeky pastime.

But you'll also find professionally produced shows, such as Boston public radio station WGBH's ``Morning Stories,'' five-minute human interest stories, or the Air America Radio's Al Franken Show.

MTV VJ Adam Curry explains its popularity on his Web site, iPodder.org.

``The reason for this overnight success is attributable to the millions of portable MP3 players currently being used, with gigabytes of empty storage space,'' Curry said.

10: Dual computer chips

Dual-core computer chips will command hype in 2005, but applications that use them will lag.

This kind of chip combines two processors in a single silicon chip, allowing a computer to focus on more than one task at the same time more easily. Intel says that more than 70 percent of its desktop microprocessors will be dual-core chips by the end of next year. Its rival, Advanced Micro Devices, is also launching its first dual-core chips for PCs, code-named Toledo, in the second half of 2005. Intel will go one step further by introducing dual-core chips for laptop computers as well.

These products should benefit consumers who do more than one thing at a time. Intel has demonstrated that a dual-core computer could complete a suite of video editing tasks in far shorter time. Users can set their computers to record a TV show at a particular time and still be able to perform other tasks -- such as instant messaging -- when the recording begins.

But software that truly exploits these chips will lag. Hence, the race to dual core is something like the competition to put a man on the moon. Once you get there, then what do you do? It all depends on how fast the software developers adapt.

---

Staff writers Dawn Chmielewski, Mike Langberg, Dan Lee, Karl Schoenberger and John Woolfolk contributed to this report.

James Fallows on IBM and the semantic web

from the NY Times:

Last week I visited the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, 20 miles north of New York, to hear six I.B.M. researchers describe their company's concept of "the future of search." Concepts and demos are different from products being shipped and sold, so it is unfair to compare what I.B.M. is promising with what others are doing now. Still, the promise seems great.

Two weeks before our meeting, I.B.M. released OmniFind, the first program to take advantage of its new strategy for solving search problems. This approach, which it calls unstructured information management architecture, or UIMA, will, according to I.B.M., lead to a third generation in the ability to retrieve computerized data. The first generation, according to this scheme, is simple keyword match - finding all documents that contain a certain name or address. This is all most desktop search systems can do - or need to do, because you're mainly looking for an e-mail message or memorandum you already know is there. The next generation is the Web-based search now best performed by Google, which uses keywords and many other indicators to match a query to a list of sites.

I.B.M. says that its tools will make possible a further search approach, that of "discovery systems" that will extract the underlying meaning from stored material no matter how it is structured (databases, e-mail files, audio recordings, pictures or video files) or even what language it is in. The specific means for doing so involve steps that will raise suspicions among many computer veterans. These include "natural language processing," computerized translation of foreign languages and other efforts that have broken the hearts of artificial-intelligence researchers through the years. But the combination of ever-faster computers and ever-evolving programming allowed the systems I saw to succeed at tasks that have beaten their predecessors.

One example is question answering. Google-type search engines are fabulous at retrieving random data, but mediocre at handling subtler queries. Using Google or Ask Jeeves, you can eventually find out how many of the world's Web pages are in each of the major languages, but it's slow and frustrating compared with finding out, say, Mozart's birthplace. Jennifer Chu-Carroll of I.B.M. demonstrated a system called Piquant, which analyzed the semantic structure of a passage and therefore exposed "knowledge" that wasn't explicitly there. After scanning a news article about Canadian politics, the system responded correctly to the question, "Who is Canada's prime minister?" even though those exact words didn't appear in the article.

The Semantic Analysis Workbench, demonstrated by Eric Brown and Dave Ferrucci, showed another way of exposing latent meaning. The I.B.M. officials said the best use for this technology would be customer-support call centers: As representatives took notes on the problems people were having with their cars or computers or prescription drugs, automatic interpretation of the results would reveal useful patterns. Arthur Ciccolo, an I.B.M. strategist for its unstructured-information project, said that call centers would be the first place for new search systems to be applied. Genomic-research projects, where unexpected correlations can be crucial, might be the second. But the demonstration suggested another likely market, since every bit of sample text was a transcript of intercepted phone calls, apparently among people suspected of terrorism. ("He made two calls from Frankfurt on these dates ... ") Whether these were real, I still don't know.

Salim Roukos demonstrated a system I would like to have tomorrow: an assortment of news headlines, roughly comparable to Google News, but from non-English language sources. The system automatically - and comprehensibly - translated the headlines and leads of each article. If you wanted to read more, you pressed a button and in 15 or 20 seconds had a good-enough translation.

MR. CICCOLO, the search strategist, said that in a way his team was trying to match - and reverse - what Google has achieved. "As Google use became widespread, people began asking why it was so much easier to find material on the external Web than it was on their own computers or in their company's Web sites," he said. "Google sets a very high standard for that Web. We would like to set the next standard, so that people will find it so easy to do things at work that they'll wonder why they can't do them on the Internet." How soon might this happen? He said, with a chuckle, "Well, if I could freeze what everyone else is doing, it could be in two years." The great part is, the competition won't be frozen. At least this part of the future looks bright.

Short background piece on 3G

3G Wireless Set to Cover U.S. in ’06

Dec. 23, 2004 By: Jane Weber Ask Jane Direct jweber@askjane.com

The Veg-O-Matic of wireless phones has taken Japan by storm, and it’s headed our way with exciting implications for marketers. What is 3G wireless? 3G, or third generation, is a technology that enables high-speed, always-on (simultaneous voice and data) wireless connectivity for mobile phone subscribers. The capabilities are so far beyond voice that the term mobile phone has been replaced with the more inclusive mobile handset. The service was introduced to the Japanese market in 2001 by DoCoMo, the largest Japanese telecom, but the handsets were unappealing and the service unreliable. Massive adoption did not occur until upstart KDDI, Japan’s second-largest telecom, leapfrogged DoCoMo by introducing its “au” wireless service in March 2002, along with a new, streamlined handset with a large display and long-lasting battery. KDDI then changed the game by introducing fixed packet pricing — think back to 1996 when AOL introduced flat-rate pricing for dial-up Internet access and you get the picture. KDDI today boasts 16 million subscribers to the service, or 70 percent of the 3G market in Japan, says Mobile Media Japan. What’s so special about 3G? High-speed connectivity, for one. KDDI recently launched 2.4 megabits per second wide band service, which is comparable in speed to cable and permits the same step-up to rich media content on your handset that high-speed access enables on your PC. The display is as much as 80 percent larger in one dimension than typical U.S. cell phones. Another key feature is the “always-on” aspect, which lets you receive a call (voice) while you’re online (data). The latest 3G handsets have built-in digital cameras with up to 2.0 megapixels of resolution, and if you’re wondering how you would ever store pictures that large, the handsets have data folders with as much as 24 megabytes of capacity. GPS capability is available, turning your display into a map and guiding you to your destination. The ability to download ring tones has been taken to the logical next step — downloading songs, and the latest handsets such as the Casio W21CA let you listen to them on stereo speakers. Many of these handsets are equipped with infrared devices, similar to a Mobil Speedpass, that let customers buy items from vending machines, for example, and have them billed to their wireless account. Smart card technology also has been introduced to turn handsets into e-wallets, thus replacing credit cards and cash. One of the more interesting e-commerce applications uses the handset’s digital camera and 2D barcode technology. KDDI recently launched a shopping service using this technology that radically increases its role in transaction processing. After incurring significant expenses to build its au wireless customer base, KDDI sought to recoup its investment by adopting an advertising model, charging advertisers for the right to put their products in front of customers. Again, think back to AOL cutting deals with advertisers to allow them access to its customers. To manage this, KDDI partnered with top affiliate marketing service provider LinkShare. KDDI is now a LinkShare affiliate, and all advertisers that want to participate must become LinkShare merchants. For example, a KDDI customer sees a print ad for an iPod in a magazine and decides to buy it. The print ad includes a 2D barcode in the lower-right corner provided to the advertiser by KDDI. The barcode contains all the relevant information — the advertiser, the price, the commission KDDI charges, transaction fees, etc. The customer snaps a picture of the barcode, LinkShare’s technology calls up an image of the product, the user confirms the purchase and it’s billed to the user’s wireless account. LinkShare’s technology calculates the purchase price, the sales commission paid to KDDI and the transaction fee paid to LinkShare. 3G wireless is far behind in the United States because of the hefty price tag attached to building the infrastructure, $60 billion by some estimates. 3G service is not expected to be widely deployed until the end of 2006. Verizon launched the service in San Diego and Washington, DC, in 2003. Cingular’s recent merger with AT&T Wireless will jump-start its foray into 3G. AT&T launched 3G this year in Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, Detroit, San Diego and San Francisco. In the United States, cell phones are largely still just phones, but this is changing as users — mostly young people — incorporate cell phones into their daily lives for various types of communication, including text messaging and sharing digital photos. Advertisers are following along, experimenting with how best to use this emerging channel. Projecting two years hence, when 3G is up and running, it seems clear that it will be a huge opportunity for marketers. The issue of advertising fragmentation becomes less of a challenge when one device consolidates most online activities and is always on. Whoever owns the customers will rule the day.