Why do drivers still get stuck in traffic? - Part 2

So what can ambientVector (ostensibly still a mobile IM company) do to reduce time wasted sitting in traffic? There's probably no good way to make drivers more responsible, but what if we could help by letting people know to route around the jam? What if your phone had a special tone that it beeped when you were approaching within 5km of a solid jam? Basically the, "get off the highway and try surface streets" notification. The technology to do this, typicaly called Location Based Services (or LBS) is already available on some networks in North America and is rather well established in Japan and Korea.

There are a lot of things that could be done to make this app more comprelling. What if the database of jams was not just collected from the various radio reports, but also whenever a large enough group of people reported being stuck (using a simple interface in an app on their phone). What if people were encouraged to report jams they were stuck in by storing "credits" every time a jam they report is sufficiently corroborated to make the notification list? The credits would then be used up every time they were notified. What if the traffic feed was sold both to media (radio, TV, etc) and put up on a web site? What if people could sign up for non-local notifications (beyond the "5km ahead on current road") of exceptional traffic on portions of streets they commonly traverse on their commute?

Who's making this happen?

We are...

Why do drivers still get stuck in traffic? - Part 1

Basically, people think traffic is caused by one of two things. A disturbance (accident, construction, alien abduction, etc) up ahead or "volume." The third reason, that which ambientVector has a solution for, is that there is still no good way (interrupt based instead of polling) for a driver to know that the road she is on has a traffic jam a few minutes ahead.

This whole "volume" thing really pisses me off. If everyone who needed to go along the highway just went at their nice, normal pace, this wouldn't be a problem. It's the idiots who don't let people on, or worse, those who speed past and try to cut their way in later, who cause people to have to brake which causes a wave like effect through traffic and ... wait ... I'll get back to this later.

Next time you approach a traffic jam, do me a favour. Slow down a bit early and notice what the people around you do. Basically, well after you can see the jam, people are speeding towards the sea of brake lights (even cutting others off) and braking at the last second. They're rushing to get into the jam. It's ridiculous. In fact, this phenominon is a key cause of the continuing traffic jam.

Think of the traffic jam from far above. You see a fairly fast moving group of cars and trucks heading along a channel (the road). At a certain point, the vehicles are more closely jammed together in the channel. At the other side of the jam, the particles (vehicles) are slowly coming back up to speed. I've kind of given it away, but it looks a lot like a compression wave doesn't it?

That which causes a compression wave is basically the same thing that can cause a "just volume" traffic jam. There are two reasons that compression waves exist. Particles can't instantaneously accelerate, and particles only slow down once they've reached the wave.

The fact is that neither particles nor vehicles can accelerate instantaneously (motorcycles capable of 0 to 100kph in 1.2 seconds notwithstanding). Once you're a part of the jam, you're stuck going a certain slow speed (sometimes 0kph ;) until the other side, where you can slowly speed up again. In fact, there's even a cognitive delay before you realize you can start speeding up again. This means that while everyone eventually gets through the jam, there is no way for the whole traffic jam to suddenly increase in speed as a whole.

Now, surely humans are not dumb particles, but ... what's the surest way to become a target on a roadway? Drive slower and try to leave plenty of space ahead of you! But this is exactly the right behaviour to encourage behind a traffic wave. Think of it this way, there's a densely packed region of cars ahead of you? You can actively cancel part of it out with a large gap; or, you can compound the problem by nor adapting for it ... like a dumb particle would. With the way drivers currently behave, I wouldn't be surprised if the old joke of traffic moving backwards came true some day.

ambient intelligence at the gym

Okay... so occasionally I get to just gripe... so here goes.

Why doesn't the treadmill or elliptical trainer know who I am? Why can't it talk to me, understand my training goals for the day, or tell my iPod to play a different subset of songs based on the intensity?

Why do I have to make training notes myself when any of the machines I use could easily send notes to my wristwatch?

My heart rate monitor has no problem talking with a treadmill... Why don't they both talk to my Palm, and my iPod, and my laptop, and my mobile, and... my car? Who knows... the number of intelligent inferences these things could make if only they could talk... is nothing short of astounding.

So who's making this happen?

We are... :)

iPod and community...

So a few days ago I was standing in line to get onto the subway. I noticed another guy with white headphones, 9
the telltale iPod sign) but didn't really pay much attention to it. As we were getting on, the usual subway crowing ensued and I noticed the Apple logo on the back of his remote control... ah, so he WAS an iPod user! I smiled knowingly and walked to get an empty seat.

A moment later I decided I wanted to listen to something else... in fact a different album... so I pulled out my little iPod and spun its glorious wheel. It turns out this guy happened to be within eyesight, and noticed my iPod. As I looked up, he smiled, pointed at my 'pod and gave me a big thumbs up.

Admittedly, a moment like this is grounds for admission into the inner realm of geekdom, but hold on a minute... what happened here? It was a brief expression of community. I love my Sony toys more than the average person... but I've never smiled at someone just because they had the same MD player. No, this was something different. There was some commonality we shared, just because we both happened to own a similar device.

Perhaps this is the first step to realizing Dertouzos' "Unfinished Revolution" ... making things so human, so personally endearing that we not only have an affinity for them, but feel as if it is actually a gateway into a part of a culture, a community, even a part of ourselves.

Pricing, Piracy and Circumvention... MP3s and wireless services

I like Jack Valenti. I don't like what he's doing, but I see where he's coming from. Unfortunately, I think the entire discussion is moot. Interestingly, I think there's a parallel between file-swapping and the problems carriers are facing with lackluster wireless data option... but more on that in a minute.

To put things in context... why am I writing this? Languages are good to learn. Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean... they're all on my to-learn list. The Pimsleur courses come very highly recommended as a terrific way to learn languages. These courses come on CDs and are almost exclusively audio-based learning. The "major" languages come in 3 learning levels... so far so good... so what's the problem? These discs retail at over $300 USD per set. For all three stages that's over $900! Now while I don't doubt the usefulness, or the superiority of Pimsleur's method, I do question the logic behind their pricing model.

While I might be willing to pay $200 or therabouts for a course, nearly one thousand dollars is a bit hard to swallow... considering I have more than six languages I'd like to learn.

So what's my point? Well, Valenti et al. are trying to make it impossible to pirate media... forget all that analog presentation + Nyquist sampling stuff which makes this - even on a theoretical level - impossible ... where instead I think they need to be focusing on making things easier to buy. The Pimsleur example may be an extreme one, but the point is simply that given prices that appear "reasonable", I think people will indeed be willing to pay for content. The media industry's attempts to thwart Napster only increased its popularity and led the way to other forms of peer-to-peer applications that don't have Napster's centralisation flaws. Clearly, the "let's stop them" model hasn't worked very well.

Okay, so how in the world does this translate to the wireless space? Simply, if your pricing isn't reasonable, you'll get burned... many times over.

Carriers often want to add interesting data services and tag a monthly-service-fee onto them. This unto itself isn't a problem... ISPs and broadband providers used to be able to dominate what the end-user saw by leveraging their homepage/portal. The same is true with wireless apps at the moment... users aren't knowledgeable enough with wireless apps to take too much into their own hands.

But what happened to web portals? Clearly the hype has died, and the model doesn't make a lot of sense anymore... just look at Yahoo!. The reason? Once people become familiar with a technology, they can go straight to the source. This means typing in the URL and going right to the app/service provider. At that point the ISP becomes nothing more than a "pipe".

Having seen some of the MSF's carriers think they can get away with charging their users for some seemingly trivial features, they face a few huge problems....

1) Initial adoption. The high price is clearly keeping users away from adopting wireless data apps.

2) By the time the carriers have reduced the prices and people are comfortable with the technology, they'll go straight to the source... and the carrier will become another data pipe... unless they actually add value to the equation... at present, they don't.

3) In North America, the sorts of business arrangements the carriers have with the content providers tends to discourage the evolution of applications... they tend to want to lock into a few "premium" service providers and the business arrangements are typically revenue-sharing with significant percentages going to the carrier... definitely not going to encourage a lot of upstarts to get into the field and produce a lot of good apps.

Before anyone argues #2 by saying "but carriers can avoid the problem by using 'walled gardens'" keep in mind that walled gardens don't work on the Internet... people surely won't tolerate them on their mobile devices either. As far as #3, DoCoMo has a brilliant model where the vast majority of revenue goes to the app/content provider. This creates a real incentive to actually develop new innovative applications, knowing full well that you - as a developer - will actually get paid for it.

Also, because the MSF-type revenue is almost entirely given to the developer, the developer must set pricing appropriately... DoCoMo doesn't dictate prices... and because any number of application providers can jockey for customers, they all need to provide both reasonable prices and truly differentiated services... two things that don't seem terribly common in the North American space.

And so my friends we come to our simple - if drawn out - conclusion : Price it right... or they will leave... or even worse... they'll spite you.

Apple... Disconnected

So I like Apple… I do. They understand design and UI better than anyone else. Of late, however, I’m beginning to think they don’t understand the user as much as they think… at least judging by their wireless strategy (or distinct lack thereof).

What’s scary is Apple is cognizant of neither the way people use wireless devices, nor of the general lack of interest about them in the wireless community.

First, the lack of understanding… Until recently Apple thought that wireless data access should be achieved by using IR to connect a laptop to a GSM handset. Now, Apple thinks that Bluetooth tethering is the best way to get data access. What exactly is Bluetooth tethering? Well, you take a Bluetooth-enabled handset, and a Bluetooth-enabled Macintosh, and the two of them talk (without wires, obviously), and the Mac gets data access through the phone.

Sounds good… so what’s the problem? Well, let’s consider this… how happy would you be if you couldn’t talk on your phone and read your email at the same time? Using a handset lets you do one or the other, but not both, at the same time. What about battery life? Well, let’s think of all the wireless (read: battery draining) connections you’d need to have to make this Bluetooth solution work:

1. Cellphone to cell tower
2. Cellphone to Laptop (Bluetooth)
3. Laptop to cellphone (Bluetooth)

This basically equates to three separate battery drains (one on the laptop, two on the cellphone) just to get one connection. Oh yeah, and all that work will make the phone pretty hot too… not to mention that the use of Bluetooth clobbers WiFi connections. Great solution, huh?

So what’s the real solution? Well, Apple led the way in integrating 802.11b into notebooks with their gorgeous Titanium G4 … my suggestion would be to put a combo 802.11b+GPRS or 1xRTT card into the notebook. But read on… there’s more… hardware alone clearly isn’t enough.

What’s the next problem? Carriers just don’t care, and companies like Sierra Wireless, definitely don’t seem too interested in building Mac wireless cards. Apple seems too stubborn to realize the rest of the world just doesn’t develop apps for them. Look at all the new wireless data products from your favorite carrier… how many of them are Mac compatible? One… none? My guess would be none, but if you’ve found a carrier offering 2.5/3G service with explicit Mac support, let me know, I’d love to hear about it.

So though Apple talks about how simple their devices are to use… any Mac user that wants 2.5/3G wireless data access basically has to put together the solution themselves, and likely won’t receive any support from Apple, their carrier, or anyone else for that matter.

What do I think Apple should do? Apple Mobile. Bundle an integrated (a la Airport) wireless card inside the notebook (mentioned above, with WiFi and 2.5/3G connectivity), set up a data MVNO service with a few carriers in their target locations, and provide a branded Apple service with unified 802.11+2.5/3G capabilities. One bill, one Apple interface. Pervasive connectivity. Real simplicity. Now Apple failed at their last attempt to offer an Internet service… if done right, this service would definitely right the sins of their last attempt.

Oh, and there’s only one battery drain… not three… and you can still use your cellphone for voice calls while you get your mail.

Now, some Apple execs (who will remain nameless) seem not to like my idea… they still think Bluetooth to a handset is somehow more “intuitive”. I disagree… it’s both unintuitive and inefficient. Apple needs to be proactive in this space, and provide a service with a clear differentiator in terms of simplicity and elegance. I think my Apple Mobile proposal meets both those needs… what do you think?

-Sutha

RIM's Demise... or not?


Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I'm Canadian... I like to see Canadian companies do well... it seems there are so few of them these days. However, the long and short of it is I’m not at all convinced RIM is going to survive the war they’ve started. As another note, this blog will likely make its way into a full blown paper on my paper site (see links at right) in a week or two… or three.

So real quickly, where does RIM stand? Well, they’ve realized they can’t just be a hardware company, so they’re now pursuing the software licensing model (like Palm). So clearly they realize they can’t compete with the other hardware vendors head-to-head… and that’s fair, who really can compete head to head with Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Handspring, Danger, etc.?

So what about their software? Hmm… well, firstly there’re a bunch of companies like Seven Networks and ViAir who are already doing the wireless inbox thing… so that’s not novel. They’re locked in a legal battle with Good Technologies over a patent for single unified email. My guess? RIM is not going to win this one. It hardly meets the patent issuance qualifier as something that’s novel to someone knowledgeable in the field.

Oh yeah, and the whole Blackberry Enterprise Server… that thing that sits behind the firewall and manages the transfer email between the Exchange/Lotus server and the Blackberry? Hmm… anyone want to guess what sort of wireless functionality Microsoft will be embedding right into Exchange? This will eliminate the need, or desire, for another expensive module to deploy enterprise wireless email.

Okay, so on the hardware front, RIM can’t win… no matter how many cool devices they put out. Integrated voice and colour screens are nice… but they’re only temporary advantages… when everyone else can package the same things in a different case, there’s no proprietary advantage. RIM used to have one… but only because everyone else was slow to integrate the radio into the device. Now that RIM is attempting to pursue the consumer market they’re going to come head to head with all the handset vendors, and other cool upstarts like Danger. Will RIM win this? No. Not unless there's multimode support... I'd be glad to discuss this idea with people at RIM :)

Software… again, the market for Blackberry Enterprise Server is eroding with competing offerings from Microsoft, Seven, ViAir, Handspring, etc. So what’s RIM’s new claim to fame? Oh… they have Java in the Blackberry so third parties can develop apps. That’s great… but the development community that already exists for either Microsoft’s PocketPC OS or Palm OS makes RIM’s developer base look tiny in comparision. And remember, the write-once run-many principle of Java means the app should run on any number of devices… so… where’s RIM’s proprietary advantage here?

So RIM can’t win hardware, won’t win software, and the licensing model for both of these components looks equally weak… What’s RIM to do? Well, go back to what made them “great” to begin with. Simple, user-centered functionality… they initially took all the simplicity tenets of the Palm and translated them to wireless… that focus is gone. Unless it’s reclaimed, who knows where RIM will be in 18-24 months… I’d hate to see yet another Canadian star go under… though I’d be more than willing to give them advice, for what it’s worth… =)

Speaking of business models... what's up with these WiFi nuts?

Okay, so I like WiFi as much as the next guy... I'm writing this on a notebook w/ WiFi right now... but there's something wrong with this whole scenario... aside from the grossly mispriced offerings from Boingo et al. I think there's an even more deeply-rooted problem w/ this whole WiFi "thing":

WiFi *by itself* isn't going to be enough. Why is this so hard to understand? I think WiFi's a great, low cost (relative to bandwidth) solution to provide wireless data access... but why do I get such looks of stunned surprise when I tell WiFi boosters that I actually would like to use data services outside these "hotspots" ? Let's look at the Blackberry, shall we? Gas station, downtown, uptown, out of town, restaurant (*sigh*), non-WiFi-enabled-homes-of-luddite-friends... let's count all the locations the Blackberry works... and it's not just the Blackberry... it's the Treo, the Palm i705, the Danger Hiptop, etc.

Sure, WiFi people will invariably respond "but those are just low-bandwidth solutions, not worthy of WiFi"... which is fine... but you know what? So is SMS, and has anyone seens SMS adoption numbers recently? Suddenly WiFi's adoption doesn't seem so impressive.

So what does a true WiFi solution need? It needs to be a complete wireless data solution. This means WiFi+2.5/3G in a card. This means a single unified carrier bill. This means more realistic pricing for "pervasive data" packages. C'mon people, data in an airport lounge is nice, but for wireless data to take off, it needs to become a part of the way we think. I need to be able to open up my notebook in a park under a nice shady tree and get GPRS/1xRTT back to the Internet... I need to be able to go home or to a coffee shop and jump to WiFi... I need to keep this with me and use it everywhere that I stop having to think about if I CAN use it or not.

Blackberry users don't often check if they're in a covered region... they tend to always have coverage... the same applies for mobile phones... this is critical to our willingness to use them anywhere, anytime... it's because we CAN... WiFi just doesn't do this.

-Sutha

P.S. Don't assume by my posts that I'm a huge RIM fan... you'd think that being a Canadian would make me one... but nope... but I'll get to that in another post.

Quick thoughts on wireless data hasn't taken off in North America: Pricing

Yeah, I know, all the industry luminaries go on and on about needing the "killer app" to get things to really take off. I'm not so sure. I agree that there are killer apps to be had. The Blackberry proves that much... as does SMS... but here's what scares me... when wireless carriers develop "neat" little apps like ringtones, icons, instant messaging, or any number of other applications which are "cool enough" to be used... they fail because they're priced outrageously.

Let's look at Boingo. Great service, great idea, no infrastructure costs because they tie the whole thing together. Undoubtedly will be a big player in the future - their arrangement w/ Sprint PCS almost guarantees this much - but has anyone taken a look at their pricing structure? Dear GOD! If I used this thing once a month or something whenever I was travelling in an airport I might not mind... but every day? HA! Adding Boingo service to my wireless carrier bill would nearly (if nor more than) double my bill... and that's BEFORE I add the requisite 802 card (okay, so I have one already, but we're talking about the average customer here)...

This is insane pricing... when I was at a carrier I noticed I always had kewl toys, and didn't have to pay for them OR the service on them... invariably when marketing would tell me what we'd be charging our customers, I'd respond w/ a look of horror... or no, it was more disbelief. The point is, there's a growing rift between reality and present pricing models... let's stop worrying about the killer app... we'll find a few along the way... for the time being, let's get people to USE their devices for kewl wireless apps... and to DO that, we'll have to make it EASY for them to use and buy... why isn't this a given?

So here's my first weblog... "blog"... I dunno, I'm sort of torn with the whole notion of one, I think... so, I think the whole idea of personalized, customized, personally relevant data is very kewl... in fact I'd say the lack of such and understanding is the one of the many reasons for such low adoption of wireless data in North America... that said, it seems a lil' bit narcissitic, doesn't it? I mean, it's not like I'm publishing a paper or something of concrete value... instead they're thought, mostly random, that just seem to cross my mind at any given time... so what does it to mean to presume that anyone would actually be interested in such a thing? Hmmm....

Blogger or Xanga... hmmm... Blogger's founders basically started this whole thing... there isn't this odd "community" sort of thing... the advertising's a little less obtrusive on Xanga... but every mangement post I hear from them makes me wonder if they have any workable business model... at least w/ Blogger there's an understanding that you *need* a real business model... makes me feel a little safer that if I invest my time writing random musings in here, that they'll still be around in a year's time or so.