tnl.net

The iPhone is here

January 9, 2007

So it’s offi­cial: Apple now is a phone man­u­fac­turer. With the announce­ment of the Apple iPhone, we can now finally assess that new prod­uct and I have to say, color me impressed. The com­pany has man­aged to over­come a lot of the prob­lems sur­round­ing exist­ing mobile phones and cre­ated a device that is close to what geeks like myself […]

2007 Predictions

January 1, 2007

This year marks the 10th anniver­sary edi­tion of the TNL.net pre­dic­tions for the year ahead. In past years, I’ve been bat­ting above 50 per­cent in terms of pre­dic­tions, except when it comes to nam­ing what will hap­pen with spe­cific com­pa­nies. The trends are gen­er­ally cor­rect (or in some case, early) and I always look at this […]

Could Apple Solidify GSM in the US?

September 26, 2006

ThinkSe­cret reports that the much-rumored-about iPhone from Apple is com­ing and will be avail­able exclu­sively through Cin­gu­lar. If true, it would mean that Apple has decided to take a posi­tion on what phone stack it is will­ing to sup­port and has come out on the side of GSM. Under­stand­ing the mobile land­scape In a lot of ways, the […]

DRM is not binary

January 21, 2005

Much of the dis­cus­sion over Dig­i­tal Rights Man­age­ment has focused on the extremes, offer­ing only and all or noth­ing approach. How­ever, my own recent expe­ri­ence is that there is much more gran­u­lar­ity to DRM than most peo­ple in the space want you to think. Fresh­ness vs. Con­ve­nience vs. Value When watch­ing movies, I have sev­eral options. I can Go […]

Number Portability FAQ

November 24, 2003

Today is a great day in the USA. Wire­less Num­ber Porta­bil­ity has arrived! I wrote about this last year and am glad that we have finally arrived to the point where num­ber porta­bil­ity is now doable. So what is num­ber porta­bil­ity? Well, effec­tive today, you can change mobile phone provider with­out hav­ing to worry about chang­ing your […]

Back from the Black-out

August 18, 2003

Some peo­ple will say that the black-out was no big deal and for most, it wasn’t but it belied a num­ber of crit­i­cal issues. Today, less than 24 hours after our elec­tric­ity was restored (for the record, 28th street between Lex­ing­ton and 3rd Avenue got its elec­tric­ity back on Fri­day at 9:45pm), I am think­ing about some […]

Software Trumps Hardware

May 13, 2003

One of the chal­lenges fac­ing the wire­less world is the con­stant change in for­mats and the fact that most wire­less devices have to include spe­cial­ized hard­ware in order to sup­port those for­mat. As a result, uptake on new wire­less for­mat can often be slow in the mobile phone indus­try as it rep­re­sents a typ­i­cal chicken or egg […]

From Scandinavia With Love

September 17, 2000

I was recently speak­ing at a con­fer­ence called Escan­di­navia 2000, which cov­ered the state of the Inter­net in Scan­di­navia. Dur­ing that con­fer­ence, I had a chance to speak to a num­ber of peo­ple about the state of wire­less in the Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries. Here’s what I’ve learned and how it can help those of you who are work­ing in the […]

It’s Connectivity, Stupid!

May 11, 2000

Here in New York City, I take my wire­less con­nec­tiv­ity for granted. The same thing was true of my trips in Europe. Car­ry­ing a cell phone and a wire­less Palm has never really been a prob­lem and, for a while at least, I was con­vinced that the wire­less rev­o­lu­tion was upon us any minute now. Last week, while on a busi­ness trip […]