Answering each of those questions gives you a different answer. However, one thing is certain — in a few short years we’ve gone from a marketplace seemingly dominated by Windows Mobile and Symbian to one where iOS and Android set the pace of innovation, customer expectations, and market growth. Both new platforms are here to stay, and rather than hurting each other, the response in the marketplace seems to be that each is accelerating the growth of the other by raising expectations for what a smart phone should be head and shoulders above the now-legacy platforms.

The expectation of an emerging dominant platform for smart phones comes from general experience with the PC industry, where there has been virtually a single platform for decades. However, the cell phone business is very different from the PC business: while market forces pushed the latter towards platform consolidation, there are several factors keeping mobile platforms distinct. Factor in Google’s self-stated motivation for entering this market in the first place and it becomes clear that the current fragmentation of smart phone platforms isn’t going to go away any time soon.

1: Cell Carriers Discourage Platform Consolidation

Partially by design and partially by nature, it’s plain impossible for a single platform to become dominant today. Cellular companies make exclusive deals with handset manufacturers, keeping phones out of the hands of consumers who would otherwise purchase them in a heartbeat. The exclusive AT&T and Apple deal comes to mind, but cell companies have been in this practice long before there was an iPhone. Hip devices draw new customers, and the manufacturer receives generous financial kickbacks to keep things exclusive. Additionally, some carriers use different radio technologies, which means that device manufacturer must develop different hardware to support all the different radio technologies around the world, adding expense and slowing hardware rollouts. This isn’t a factor which will go away soon.

2: The Market Has Legs

In 2009 a smart phone sales exploded. According to Gartner, there were sales of 172 million smart phones in 2009, a 24% increase from 2008, and that growth is expected to continue. This means that every company in the market can sell more units than the previous year without competing directly for customers. As long as this continues to be the case there is plenty of room in the market for multiple platforms. For some context, the ceiling for this growth is high. If all cell phones sold were smart phones (not an unreasonable long-term perspective) there would be 1.2 billion every year, so there’s quite a bit of room to grow.

3: Consumers Aren’t Sticky

In stark contrast to the PC market, smart phones are relatively simple to operate. Since the learning curve is lower, consumers are less likely to be afraid of switching to a different platform. Other factors gain relative importance. For example, consumers don’t put a high value on the shape and color of their desktop PC or laptop (beyond the basic form factor), but industrial design plays a more important role with smart phones. In part this is because OS tie-in is less important.

Consumers are also likely to switch between cell carriers every year or two, and when they do they are more likely to purchase the most cost-effective smart phone available with the new carrier. Statistically, this depends mostly on the promotions running at the time, if the same platform is even available. Apple’s exclusive AT&T contract, and Microsoft’s major revision to Windows Mobile are cases where users may not even be able to stick with the same platform if they wanted to.

4. Google Isn’t in the Mobile Phone Business

Surprise. Here’s a quick recap from Eric Schmidt from when Android was first announced:

The fundamental problem with most phones today is they don’t have full-power browsers. We’ve been taking our mobile services and use specialized engineering to get them on other devices. No longer … Imagine not just one Gphone, but a thousand Gphones as a result of the partnerships … I’m a very happy iPhone user. It’s important to say that there will be many, many mobile experiences, and Android will be used on many other kinds of devices…

Remember that when Android first came out, there was really no viable mobile web browser aside from Safari on the iPhone. Google makes their money on web search. Lots of people had phones, but couldn’t realistically use them to search, and Google therefore couldn’t make money from them. Google solved the problem by giving away a smart phone OS to any device manufacturer who wanted it.

So, while Google does have a bottomless wallet, there’s no reason for them to spend significantly more on cell phone development. Android simply has to be “good enough” to motivate smart phone competitors to improve the browsers on their phone. Google makes the money whether a user searches via an Android phone, an iPhone, a Symbian phone, or potentially even a Windows Mobile phone (should mobile IE ever become a reasonable browser). That’s why the pace of Android development has slowed as its uptake has accelerated. Google doesn’t need to dominate the market, because they don’t care which phone or browser you use, as long as you use one. To put it another way, Android is a stick they can use to herd the cell phone market in the direction Google wants.

Conclusions

The public likes competition, and the Internet will never stop pitting different platforms against each other. At first glance, Android and iPhone OS look like they compete against each other. However, the motivations behind their development are very different: Apple wants to sell hardware, while Google wants to spur users to browse the web from their phones. These goals aren’t mutually exclusive, which is why Eric Schmidt sat on the Apple board of directors until well after Android was released. Because of their respective philosophies, Google and Apple will never compete in the mobile phone space — Apple will never license their OS to other device manufacturers, and Google will never shift their revenue base to hardware sales (The Nexus One is another stick to hit device manufacturers with, not an attempt to make a profit for Google).

So, to answer my friend’s question, “who will win the mobile phone wars: Apple or Google?” I don’t think either will win, because there isn’t really a war – at least not between those two. Palm, Microsoft, Nokia, and Research in Motion are different stories altogether. Until the market hits the ceiling though, none of them are going to achieve market dominance anytime soon. It has become a game of staying power, and the only platform in any real danger is Palm.

The site is written at an introductory level, and will focus on simple instructions to get encryption working in your favorite applications. There will also be articles on how encryption is seen from the popular media and Movies and TV, as well as some of the basic theory.

Recommend it to your friends!

I immediately realized my mistake, and rushed to dry it off. If you search the Internet, you’ll find that the beat thing to do next is stick your iPhone (or other soggy electronics) into a bag of white rice. Rice absorbs water better than almost anything else. It will quick the moisture right out of your phone.

After 24 hours, I took the iphone a out of the rice and guess what? It worked perfectly! Well, almost perfectly. The screen was a little psychadellic, but that cleared up after a few more days as the cu al bits of water dried up, and then it was good as new.

Or so I thought. While I had survived the immediate risk of frying my phone, the moisture ha done some long term damage to the circuit board inside: it had allowed rust to start to set in.

Fast forward to today. 6 months later, my phone started acting funny. It claimed I had an incompatible device plugged in. All of a sudden, the battery only lasted a few hours. The circuit board had rusted and begin to short out.

Unfortunately, the water indicator was still bright orange, so apple wouldn’t fix it for me (rightly so). There’s nothing for it now; my iPhone is in the twilight of it’s life, ends early with electronic alzhimer’s.

My wife is looking to buy a car. She is 30 years old. She likes iTunes and reads her news online instead of a newspaper. She is concerned about global warming, and about the war on terror. We’re about to have kids, which brings those concerns to the forefront. So, when we started looking around for a car, we remembered all those cool next-generation automobiles we’ve been bombarded with at auto shows and the news. And we were surprised to find that we could hardly find any. This was caused by a combination of them not having actually made it to production despite the hype, and that the dealers practically pretend that they don’t exist, even when they are sitting on the lot.

This leads to a lot of confusion for people who are actually looking to buy a car based on some of the new technology in the pipeline. Auto manufacturers talk a lot about the research and development and upcoming technologies, but it’s difficult to determine what you can actually purchase today.

Also, press releases and science articles tend to focus on how the technologies work and the impact that will have on emissions, the environment, global warming, and the butterfly population in Paraguay. Instead, even the most idealistic drivers are more concerned with how their lives will be affected with automotive technologies different from what they’re used to. The social commentary this implies is left to the reader.

Hybrid Electric (HEV)

Available: Since 1999

“Hybrids” have been available for a few years already from a number of manufacturers. In the United States, Honda made the hybrid debut with the Insight in 1999. They were joined a few years later by the Honda Civic and Toyota Prius. Today, there is a growing number of Hybrids available or shortly available from most major car manufactures.

A Hybrid is a car that has both an electric and a gas motor. The electric one assists the gas when the gas motor would otherwise be inefficient (like at low speeds). Most hybrids are simply an alternate version of a non-hybrid car, with the notable exception being the Toyota Prius. Hybrids are generally quieter than their non-hybrid counterparts. Japanese Hybrids tend to focus on getting better fuel efficiency, while American hybrids tend to focus on getting more powerful engines at the same fuel efficiency. This follows the general trend of American manufacturers to focus on trucks and SUVs, while Japanese manufacturers focus more on cars.

The biggest advantage, for both the driver and the auto manufacturer, is that Hybrid Electrics are a drop-in replacement for a conventional automobile. You drive it, you go to the gas station, you park it in your garage. The driver doesn’t need to do anything differently that they normally would with another car, and the manufacturer doesn’t have to take a risk of drivers accepting any abnormal requirements.

The trade off for this lower risk is that Hybrids are a compromise of technology and capability, tipped well against technology. There is a limit to how much electricity the hybrid can generate just from braking and excess energy from the gas motor, and this limits the efficiency of the electric motor. For this reason, hybrids can improve fuel efficiency by up to 40%, but you won’t see more than that. Also, in general, Gas-Electric hybrids tend to be either underpowered, or else give up their fuel-savings in favor of additional power to the engine.

Plug-In Hybrid Electric (PHEV)

Available: 2008, if we’re lucky

Plug-In Hybrids are an evolutionary step beyond Hybrids. The general idea is that instead of using the gas motor in the car to generate electricity (which is inefficient), instead plug it in to your power outlet overnight. Other than that basic idea, Plug-In Hybrids are very similar to regular Gas-Electric Hybrids. In fact, you could treat it the same exact way as you treat a regular Gas-Electric Hybrid. While you wouldn’t get the additional advantage of home-charging, there would be no other ill effects.

Why would you want to plug in your Hybrid? Power plants can generate electricity much more efficiently than your car engine. So, where it might take a few gallons of gas to fully charge your Hybrid’s battery (since you must drive around to get it charging), it would only cost you a few cents in electricity to charge it from your wall socket.

This tends to favor people who drive close to home. Toyota claims that their Plug-In Prius, which may debut in 2009, will be able to drive around seven miles on electricity alone. That means that your neighborhood chores will require zero gasoline, and while your commutes to work will still eat up the same miles-per-gallon as a regular Prius, those miles only start to count after you’ve driven seven.

If you are anxious to get a Plug-In Hybrid, there are people who have built their own conversion kits for both the Prius and the Civic. These will void your factory warranty, but may be the ticket if you don’t want to wait until the 2009 model year.

Electric and Series Hybrid Electric

Available: 2008 for super cars, at least 2010 for mortals?

Tesla Motors shocked the automotive industry in 2006 by announcing an all-electric sports car which could outrun a Ferrari. The Tesla Roadster has a range of nearly 250 miles before it needs to be recharged, by plugging it into an electrical outlet. At a cost of around $100,000, these aren’t for the average driver, but Tesla plans on using the technology created for the Roadster on a line of family sedans called Whitestar, which they plan on introducing as a competitor for BMW’s and Mercedes possibly as soon as the 2010 model year. If things go well, they are also planning a more affordably-priced sedan after 2012.

Ignoring the EV-1 which GM released and then recalled in the early 90′s, Chevrolet plans on releasing the much anticipated Volt. This muscle-car-esq electric vehicle drives as far as 40 miles on a single overnight charge. While this may not sound like a lot, the Volt also has an on-board gas generator, which means that you can fill up at the pump, and drive it almost like a regular car. This is known as a Series hybrid – The gasoline engine doesn’t drive the wheels like a conventional car. Instead, its only purpose is to recharge the battery while the car is on the road. This is an advantage over the Tesla Roadster, as it means that you can take the Volt on a road trip without having to worry about plugging in. GM has a bad track history with technology, and most consumers are wary about their true intentions. For example, many have alleged that the GM fuel cell program was really just a PR stunt to push off having to upgrade it’s auto technology base by pretending to be proactive. Time will tell, and while GM claims that it won’t be ready until 2012, hopeful rumors hint at 2010.

Other automakers are pursuing Series Hybrids as well. Some other potentials on the horizon besides the Volt are the Saturn Vue and Volvo ReCharge.

Fuel Cells

Available: Don’t hold your breath

Fuel cells are touted to be the next-generation car technology. Fuel cells are a replacement for batteries. Instead of charging your car with electricity, you fill it’s fuel-cell with a fuel (usually hydrogen), and the fuel-cell uses that to create electricity, without the need for a conventional motor or power generator.

A fuel cell does not describe a type of propulsion – just a power source. For example, a Hybrid Electric Vehicle might use a fuel cell instead of batteries, or a full electric vehicle might as well. While fuel cells promise to boost the efficiency of such vehicles, they are not required. That’s a good thing, because no one really knows how to make them yet.

Practically every auto maker has announced intentions of producing a fuel-cell based car. There are several prototypes, usually costing several million dollars and with significant performance problems. The technology simply isn’t there yet, and it doesn’t look like its going to be ready any time soon. Manufacturers like to use fuel-cell technology as an example of what they are developing for the future. Unfortunately (especially in the case of GM), this is really just an excuse for why they have no interesting technologies in the present.

Hydrogen

Available: Never

For a while, hydrogen-powered cars was the talk of the town. Yet, years later, there isn’t a single mass-produced hydrogen automobile. Why not?

While gasoline and even electrical outlets are commonplace throughout the United States, you would be hard-pressed to find liquid hydrogen at your local filling station. Even worse, it can be dangerous stuff. Hydrogen is explosive at room temperature, and either super-low temperatures or super-high pressure us required to keep it contained in a gas-tank. Given how much easier it is for people to switch to an electric car versus a hydrogen one, don’t expect hydrogen cars to make it to mass production any time soon. In fact, no car manufacturer has any such plans, although some government agency vehicles and public buses do run on hydrogen, and BMW has a number of prototypes which they have processionally showed off since 2001.

Which do I get?

Unfortunately, the lesson learned here is that there isn’t too much choice in the marketplace yet. If you can wait 6 months, you may be able to get a Plug-In Hybrid from Toyota. Then again, maybe not. Toyota hasn’t promised anything. If you have $100,000 to burn, you can get a super car-class Tesla Roadster that you can’t take overnight away from a power socket.

However, if you are in the market for a car today, the only technology readily available is a regular Hybrid. The good news is that they are gaining popularity, and many manufacturers are making them. My wife will be looking at models from Honda, Nissan, Toyota, and Lexus. If anyone makes an announcement that they will have a Plug-In Hybrid available in the 2009 model year before we make our purchase though, we’ll definitely hold off until that comes out.

And we’ll trade up whenever the Chevy Volt becomes available. Right before we book tickets on Virgin Galactic to the Budget Suites hotel on the moon.

]]> http://www.2robots.com/2007/11/27/where-is-my-car-20/feed/ 4 http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/07/fighting-spyware-for-the-average-man/ http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/07/fighting-spyware-for-the-average-man/#comments Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:35:23 +0000 Daniel Eisner http://www.2robots.com/2006/12/07/fighting-spyware-for-the-average-man/ I’m planning a trip to visit my friends for a holiday party. They have a computer which always gets infested so badly with spyware that it takes 10 minutes or more to boot up and is virtually unusable. I’ve reloaded Windows on it twice for them so far, but whatever they’re doing that gets it infected, they can’t seem to stop. So, I’m taking a new tactic.

Although I am a huge Linux fan myself, I hadn’t thought it was really ready for the average person until recently. So, here’s the experiment: install Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on their computer as a dual-boot solution, and see how it goes. My friends are a perfect test case: they know how to use a computer but aren’t programmers or system admins. I think that Linux will work just fine for them, and solve all their spyware and “slow computer” problems.

If you’ve never tried Linux, or haven’t in a while, now is a good time to. I recommend Ubuntu specifically — It’s great for both beginners and experienced Linux users. It has very cool eye-candy (if you computer is new enough), a simple user interface, and a helpful user community. You can find videos of the installation online if you’re worried about what to expect. Also, a big benefit is that you can run Linux withough even installing it, or alternatively, you can install it so that when your computer boots you can choose whether to go into Windows or Linux (which is how I’ll set it up for my friends).

Today, Linux can do just about everything Windows can … the question is whether it can do it simply enough to not cause trouble for the average Windows user. That’s what I’ll find out after this weekend.

One thing I want to comment on is that some of the hardware people out there are complaining that this project isn’t that impressive, and some of the software people are complaining that the software isn’t that impressive. The point behind the whole thing is that from an amateur / non-techie perspective, and especially from a non-electrical engineering perspective, a lot of this stuff is *very* intimidating. By doing a project that is both a) straightforward, and b) rewarding / fun, the idea is to overcome the first and hardest part of the learning curve: that it is freaking intimidating to start building electronic circuits on your own without any formal training.

Having said that, I come from a deep software background, with a fair amount of (hands-off hardware knowledge), and I still found this project intimidating. But it’s still something that a smart high-school student could do. Hopefully, this article will help lower the bar for some of the people out there who want to get started in robotics but don’t know how.

[later] I also got linked from Make magazine. Thanks!

A stuffed animal that turns it’s head to watch you! I figure this would be a fun way to build a simple robot, and would also serve to spook out house guests (and my wife!)

Last week, I ordered a Basic Stamp from Parallax — a most excellent beginner’s microcontroller. A microcontroller is a very cool thing — it’s like an entire computer on a single chip. You can plug each pin in to a servo or button or any other input or output, and get it to interact with its environment. The only drawback is that the microcontroller is slow, and only has a little RAM. The one I got has only 8 bytes! Of course, it only costs $15… I definitely recommend this board for anyone getting started in robotics or micro controllers.

Anyway, I built my robot into a stuffed sheep my wife had. I used Parallax’s PIR sensors for the eyes. These are infrared motion sensors. I figured that if it senses motion only in the right one, it should turn the head right. If it senses motion only in the left one, it should turn left.

This basic idea worked fine, although there were some problems with the sensors.

First, the sensors were way too sensitive — the slightest thing would set them off. This was due in part to the fact that they have a very wide field of view. This is good for a security system, but for my robot, if one sensor saw motion, they both did, making it difficult to tell which direction the motion was coming from. I countered this by cutting out paper “irises” for the PIR sensors, which you can see in the pictures below. This turned out to be pretty easy.

Next, the sensors take a long time to reset. They basically send a 0 or 1 to the CPU: 1 means there is motion, and 0 means there isn’t. This worked fine, and when I moved my arm, it sent a 1. However, it takes 2-3 seconds for the sensor to reset back to a non-motion state, even if I stop moving. There are a variety of reasons for this, and you can read up on how PIR sensors work to learn why, but the problem was that the head would always turn too far. Also, since the motion sensors were mounted on the turning head, they would constantly detect motion!

The solution here was to turn the head when motion was detected on one side, but then wait a few seconds before looking at the sensors again. This worked great, but unfortunately means that the stuffed animal won’t be able to track motion smoothly.

The last problem I ran into was that the motion sensors don’t provide any sort of degree of the motion sensed. Therefore, we don’t know how far to turn towards it. 90 degrees? 45? My solution was to turn the head some random amount within a small range. If it turns out this amount was too small, the robot will detect more motion the next time its sensor resets and turn some more. if it was too much, then the next iteration it will turn back to correct. if it was just right, then it will detect motion with both detectors and stop turning.

Incidentally, by the way, a regular human will almost constantly set off a motion detector pointed at them. They are sensitive enough that even breathing motions can be detected unless you are specifically trying to hide. The end behavior is that if there is a person in the room, the robot will turn towards them, slowly zeroing in on looking right at the person. Also, because the servo is embedded in a stuffed animal, the sound is muffled, and pretty silent. Basically, it looks like any other stuffed animal, except that if you sit in the same place for a while, you will notice that it seems to be looking at you. And, unless you happen to be looking at it exactly when it turns its head, you won’t know what’s going on! Excellent — exactly what I wanted

There are some drawbacks. Since the sensors are so simple, multiple people in the same room will confuse it. Also, because the sensors are infra-red, they can be confused with an air conditioner in the room, or by opening the window on a hot day. But overall, those effects are negligable.

All in all, this was a great project. I haven’t really build a robot or my own circuit before without any instruction, and this project took me maybe 6 hours, including reading the manuals, learning pBasic, figuring out how to wire everything, and tweaking the code. Total cost was $65, including shipping for all the parts, but not for the stuffed animal

Attached is the pBasic code which I have running right now, as well as some photos of the robot. I think my next step is going to be to put the Basic Stamp board inside the sheep, so it isn’t so conspicuous.
Feedback / Comments welcome!

‘ {$STAMP BS1}
‘ {$PBASIC 1.0}

SYMBOL Servo_pin = 0

SYMBOL Temp = W0
SYMBOL Temp2 = W1
SYMBOL Rand = W2

SYMBOL RSensor = PIN1
SYMBOL LSensor = PIN2

Init:
Rand = 55

Main:
RANDOM Rand
Rand = Rand // 8
Rand = Rand + 8
PAUSE 2300
Temp = RSensor
Temp2 = LSensor
DEBUG Temp, Temp2, ” “
IF Temp = Temp2 THEN Center
IF Temp > Temp2 THEN Right
GOTO Left

Right:
DEBUG “Right”
FOR temp = 0 TO Rand
PULSOUT Servo_pin,120
PAUSE 30
NEXT
GOTO Main

Left:
DEBUG “Left”
FOR temp = 0 TO Rand
PULSOUT Servo_pin,190
PAUSE 30
NEXT
GOTO Main

Center:
‘FOR temp = 0 TO 2
‘PULSOUT Servo_pin,150
‘PAUSE 20
‘NEXT
GOTO Main

For some of those paying attention, this might sound sort of familiar — in fact, it is almost exactly the same approach Verizon and Qualcomm used for handset-based games — the ones you play on your cell phone. What happened there was that, yes, in the first 6 months or so, just about anyone could produce a video game. However, as time went on, it became more and more expensive to produce games — not because of your own costs, but due to purchasing a development kit, paying for validation costs which go up regularly, and the increasing costs of attending developer conferences. That last one might sound like a luxury rather than a requirement, but the way things work in the phone software industry is very much like an Adventurer’s Club. You’re either a member or you’re not. And the gates to get your software actually listed on a phone are controlled by a very small number of individuals. Oh, and by the way, they won’t even tell you if they will carry your game until you’ve already eaten all of these costs.

As you can see, it’s not a very conductive environment for small or independent developer. And it’s not meant to be. Despite a lot of talk about how this deployment model “levels the playing field” for large and small developers, take a look at which companies are actually creating the games you might find on your phone. Typically, there are only a handful, and you wont find many you haven’t heard of: Konami, Sony, Jamdat (which is actually mostly owned by Verizon). Virtually no small developers. And why should there be? The phone companies would rather carry several games from one developer than one game each from multiple developers. The paperwork is simpler.

Let’s get back to the XBox 360. Microsoft is pushing the Indie developer thing much harder than Qualcomm ever did. OK then, where are all the games from these Indie developers? The 360 has been out for almost 8 months, and there are hardly any things to choose from. Microsoft has some PR-speak about the issue.

Well great! I’d like to develop games for the XBox! I’ve worked with Direct X before! I have some free time! Where can I get started? As long as I can make something good quality (which is a reasonable restriction), I can expect to have a reasonable chance to get my game on there, right? Sorry, here’s Microsoft’s response:

“The The XBox RDP is open to established professional game development studios with a history of shipped titles and good industry references. If you represent a startup company, you may be considered if the team is made up of experienced individuals.”

Does that sound like they’re encouraging Indie developers to you?

Burt Rutan is the designer responsible for SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X Prize by being the first commercial spaceship to fly twice within two weeks. He has is right when he says

“I am absolutely embarrassed that the average age of those that have left the atmosphere are as old as I am.”