There is going to be a lot said about Steve Jobs in the coming days, but I would just say two things.
1. Jobsian – an approach to product development that was singularly successful and others aspire to.
2. Watch his 2005 Stanford commencement address and be inspired.
Video calls from a metal tube travelling at 600mph at 35000 feet… something that the military could do, but how about an ordinary joe?
Ever received or made a Skype video call to hwho was on an airplane? I can’t say I have, but the folks over at MSNBC have, in a news segment shot yesterday. Time magazine’s senior political analyst, Mark Halperin, called up the studio via Skype while in the middle of a red eye flight, and gave his opinion on Chris Christie’s speech through a video call. Not to mention, he was in the plane’s lavatory as well.
via Skype in-flight video call made on MSNBC TV | Ubergizmo.
I am impressed that something so amazing is available to us but I am personally not impressed as my time on planes should not be bothered by someone doing the “I’m on the phone Dom Joly from right next to me”. However I can see the creation of ‘phone booths’ next to to the toilets…
I have always found it useful to have a way of getting online when overseas. Sometimes it is painful (like my recent trip to France) and sometimes it is painless (like on my trips to the less sunny Dublin). Whichever location you go to though you can be sure that you can get a local Prepay/PAYG data SIM card that just needs to be put into the right device to give you a data connection. I have been favouring an unlocked MiFi device but in my recent troubles I needed to do more debugging that what was possible on the MiFi. I made use of an unlocked Android phone and it provided the best service it could considering the lousy service I was on (Orange FR was appalling).
The key is getting one that is unlocked or is easy to unlock, and I made use of the very unlockable Orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade). At least I could once I also put Android 2.2 on the device. It was a very effective Personal WiFi device over there and I am now definitely looking to replace my older MiFi device with the Android, most obviously because it also offers access to the voice services necessary in many locations to update the credit as well as the use of a local voice number if I so required (my current tariff with O2 makes that very optional).
For those of you who are not into unlocking (and a bit of rooting!) then I do suggest digging through the phones on display to find an Android 2.2 or above device and getting it unlocked. I do recommend checking out Carphone Warehouse for Prepay deals as their phones do tend to be unlocked to allow them to sell on any network but make sure that the phone is an Android 2.2 or above to get the built-in WiFi Tethering. The latest deals for the Sony Experia X10 Mini look interesting but you will have to look at some of the third party mechanisms for WiFi Tethering if you do purchase that one as it is 2.1 or even earlier by default.
After the experience of the last few days whilst in France, this article really brings home the need to have a number of options available to you for getting your data connectivity that you need to do your job when travelling.
Starbucks is a digital oasis for me.I usually pop in, fire up the Starbucks mobile card app, order a beverage, have my iPhone scanned to pay for it and then sit down to use the Starbucks WiFi access point (provided by AT&T) on a smartphone, iPad or notebook (or netbook). This plan usually works just fine. And, I’ve executed this plan more times that I would care to admit.
via 0.12Mbps on Starbucks WiFi? Have a Backup Data Access Plan! – SocialTimes.com.
I had options that I could use despite my connectivity problems – the options I had left cost too much ‘just’ for connectivity whilst on vacation so I did not use them and waited until I could get the most cost effective solution working.
My options in order of priority are:
Despite preparation I have found myself without Internet access during my vacation. I have come a cropper from a combination of factors ranging from pointless bureaucracy, through lack of valid configuration info that is consistent or correct, to the final (assumed) problem of the operator not liking anything but my Android mobile as a connecting device. On top of that, the world of wireless broadband in France (there … J’accuse!) is worse than the worst nether regions of deepest Dorset in the UK.
So those who come to this site for update news from the mobile worker world have not seen much for the first three days of this week. I do not promise much from the rest of this week either but I shall try. Please expect some catch up info in the meantime as well, so sorry if some of the news is a little old. I might even record my travails in a future post.
The big main news of this post is that world of ubiquitous internet has a long … long … long … way to go.
One of great things about Google Android mobile phones combined with Google Apps or MS Exchange, is that you do full sync your email, contacts and calendar between your mobile devices and your ‘cloud’, so it is available everywhere. I can heartily recommend any independent or small firm to utilise Google Apps if their employees have a smartphone (Android or iPhone or both!).
However, this sync solution does not cover everything on your smartphone, as it leaves out the SMS/MMS and call records, so if you have a crash like I did a couple of weeks ago that leaves your Android phone clean of any data (I was hacking my phone so I do deserve the loss) then you end up losing your SMS and call record history. What I found though is that there are a number of Android apps that are available that backup your SMS and call records, and one in particular stuck out because of the way that it stores your backup in your Google Mail account. Others tend to store the data on your microSD card or in an archive on a server.
The app I settled on is SMS Backup+ from Jan Berkel, which I have been testing for a couple of weeks and I have found it works – that is it, it works reliably. This software backs up on a schedule (which you can define to manage battery life) using IMAP into your Google Mail account, saving your SMS/MMS under the tag SMS (you can change it to something you want to define) and saving your Call Logs under the ‘Call Logs’ tag (again you can change it to whatever you want). You can also choose from a number of options for the format of the From address (I picked Name+phone number).
This in itself is brilliant and an excellent way of ensuring that you always have copies of messages sent to your phone and the details about all the calls made and received. However this app goes one better that maybe is for the OCD amongst us (me!), in that these Call Logs can be set to populate your Gmail calendar. This gives a fantastic visualisation of all your calls made and received alongside your appointments, and I find this an incredible feature that will prove useful in understanding what has been done when, and with who. It does not record the calls though… that is the wrong side of creepy 
.
I have not found something similar for the iPhone as yet but then I am not now using the iPhone everyday as I am a full-on Android convert. I can really recommend you to look at this solution if you are an Android user, particularly if you are a consultant/knowledge worker. Even if you don’t use the calendar integration, this really fills a gap in making sure all of your mobile data is safe, and hooks into your Cloud sync solution.
This is encouraging news reported via ZDNet UK, long time supporters of reducing roaming costs.
The European Commission has unveiled its proposals for driving down the cost of mobile voice, text and data roaming for people travelling in Europe.
via EU acts to push down mobile roaming costs | Mobile Working | ZDNet UK.
The figures shown in the article, that the cost of data roaming is a maximum of £0.03 per MB, are very stark compared to data roaming rates that for me are £3 per MB. How many other industries can get away with charging 100x the cost of providing the service. Even allowing for 100% markup, you should be seeing costs of only £0.06 per MB, or a more useful figure… 1GB for £60, at the upper limit of what I would see was acceptable for a roaming data service.
Although encouraging, the retail price caps are really still 10x what they should be for data. With regard to voice calls, many operators already beat these limits – for example I am charged £0.15 per minute plus VAT for making and nothing for receiving whilst roaming.
Still waiting then…
You land in a strange outpost with your Smartphone and Laptop, you cannot find any WiFi that costs less than $20 per hour, you dare not turn on roaming data on your phone for the horror of $9 per MB charging, you need to feel close to your home country, you need to be able to find out what is happening at home, you need to make that ‘I’ve landed tweet’, or find out where your Hotel is…. You are stuck. You have to bite the bullet and run up a chunk of charging to your account….
…. or you grab and power up one of the most interesting devices that you can buy today – the Amazon 3G Kindle eBook reader.
What! I hear you say. Why that? It has an extremely interesting feature for the travelling worker – 3G/GPRS Worldwide data service built in, that costs nothing combined with quite an effective web browser hidden away in the Experimental menus. This gives you the capability to do simple web browsing including tweeting, and possibly accessing webmail wherever you are for nothing. You do of course need to buy the Kindle, which will set you back about £150/€160/$200, but there are no transaction costs. Why would Amazon do this? Because of the other more obvious capability of the device – giving you access anywhere to eBook purchasing.
You know you need one…. The books are good too.
… or in other words, having a good charging solution for your charge hungry smartphone, MiFi and tablet. This is where the A-solar Power Bank Pro comes in.
I have always prided myself on always having the best tech, particularly when it comes to smartphones, Wi-Fi gadgets and tablets. However one of the banes of my life is the poor battery life that much of this kit comes with, particularly with the smartphones. One solution I have had is to always make use of the latent charging capabilities of my netbook/notebook, by ensuring that I can charge everything over standard USB leads. This has worked well but it has not been always the most ergonomic solution, with cables appearing out of bags and always having to ensure that I am charging on shutdown to ensure that the port power is not shutdown when I go into suspend mode (I know some laptops do have an always on port).
So I cast around and found the A-solar Power Bank Pro, which gives me 5000mAh of charging goodness. This can be fed to your USB based devices either via a standard USB output with 500mA capability, or via the very iPad and MiFi friendly 1000mA USB output. The key and very important feature here is that they can be both used at the same time to charge two devices, even a combination of iPhone and iPad. I have now been using this for a good three months during which I have kept myself running during long travel days into and out of London, as well as the much more demanding weekend in Amsterdam, whilst I was running around Koninginnedag. The London travel days stressed my Smartphone battery through running it fully active (browsing and tweeting) for the full 4 hours of travel time each day, plus all the normal usage going from meeting to meeting, including heavy GPS usage from the Walking Directions features of Google Navigation. A much more demanding test of its capability was the Koninginnedag weekend, during which I double handed an iPhone and an Android phone, taking video and photographs and posting to Facebook and Twitter throughout the day via an unlocked MiFi. It kept me going so I never lost connectivity and never lost a photo opportunity. It even charges overnight from a standard USB port, so it really cuts out the need to have an additional power block, and it fits well within an inside or outside suit pocket, or cargo trousers/shorts.
This is an excellent device to extend your smartphone, iPad, iPhone or MiFi life on even the heaviest data usage days, and can really recommend you get one, and at between €39 and €49 it is a snip. I got mine whilst passing through Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, for the lower price 
When I travel, I have always looked for an effective and lower cost way of getting data on the move – which has meant Mobile Broadband data. Roaming costs mean that I have settled on an unlocked Mifi unit and getting efficient at figuring it out how the local Pre-Paid/PAYG market works and how to read the particular language/make use of the Translate features of Chrome. It still is the lowest cost option but you end up with a selection of different SIMs which periodically become invalid because of operator inactivity rules. There is an alternative which is more expensive than local SIMs and is only one SIM – Maxroam. It also works if you want something for your voice calls (I don’t as I have an effective Roaming voice call solution via my operator). Check out the video interview by Scoble of the company’s principles from when they were in Amsterdam at The Next Web conference at the end of April for full details.
What solution works for you is something that you need to decide. I am tempted to get one as a backup for when I go to a country that is very awkward about Pre-Paid/PAYG (which the Netherlands is by the way with its avoidance of credit card top-up online).