I’m still getting acquainted with the unsubsidized Google Nexus One I bought last week, but I’ve spent enough time with it to share my likes and dislikes. Since there’s only a 14-day return period and plenty of return fees — especially if you went the subsidized path — I figure some prospective purchasers might benefit from these thoughts. In no particular order, here’s what I’m really enjoying about this phone, and what I’m disappointed in. Bear in mind that not everything in my list is specific to the Nexus One and I expect other current Android handsets to gain some of these features through software upgrades in the future. But these features are a part of the current Nexus One experience, so I’m including them in my list.

1. The device starts up fairly quickly. In about 33 seconds or so from a cold start, you’re up and running. The near-two minute boot time of my Pre has turned me off.

1. The same holds true for turning off the device. It completely powers down — not into sleep mode, but actually off — in under six seconds.

2. I like how the phone doesn’t have to be on for charging. My iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre are “on” when charging. That annoys me at night as the phones — mainly the Pre — are glowing while I’m trying to sleep. Or they might ring or pop up a notification during the night. A silly little thing, yes, but I still like how it’s handled on the Nexus One. There is a very small LED indicator to tell you the device is charging or fully charged.

3. Blinking notifications are great. With my iPhone, I was constantly waking it and unlocking it to see if I had any emails. No need for that now. I just glance at the scroll ball to see if it’s blinking. I have it set up for various notifications — email, direct messages and replies on Twitter, etc….

4. Although it’s taking me time to get used to, multitasking is awesome. I’m pre-conditioned by 2.5 years of iPhone use to hit the Home button before moving to another program, but I’m slowly learning to hold the button and choose an already running app. Oddly, I used to flick cards to close apps on the Pre all the time for the very same reason. Anyway, when I remember that previously used apps are still running, I can move around quite quickly.

5. Gmail is heavenly, especially with multiple accounts. (Seriously — have you ever described an email client as heavenly? It has to be that good for me to call something as mundane as email ”heavenly!”) For a Gmail user, there’s little doubt in my mind that Android should be near the top when choosing a mobile platform. The native client is far more robust and easier to use than on any other device I’ve touched in the past few years. And Android 2.1 adds support for multiple Gmail accounts within the one mail application. I have both my personal and my work mail going side-by-side in the one app. It’s not a unified Inbox, mind you, but it’s a quick menu tap to switch accounts. Plus there’s starring, labels, a button for Older mail and so much more. New email also arrives on my phone faster than on the web too  Sorry to gush over this one, but again: if you use and like Gmail on the web, odds are pretty good that you’ll like it on this device. Ditto for the Google Calendar app.

6. Voice to text might not be as heavenly as the Gmail experience, but it’s pretty darn close. The feature is usable with nearly every text field on the device. I can speak emails or text messages — even tweets — and the phone will process the speech into text. And it’s pretty darn accurate too. Even in very noisy environments, I’ve had fantastic results thanks to the secondary microphone used to cancel out background noise.

7. I love the level of integration Google adds with some third party apps. For example, when you take a picture, you can share it via Picasa, Gmail, text message, Facebook or over Bluetooth. But you can also Tweet the picture right from the camera app. And the phone is smart enough to realize which Twitter app you have installed. When I first got the device, I installed TwiDroid and it magically appeared in my sharing list for pics. I thought that was pretty cool, but I later removed TwiDroid to install Seesmic. Lo and behold, Seesmic now appears automatically in my sharing options. That’s intelligent — not rocket science — but intelligent.

8. Speaking of image sharing reminds me of the camera. The 720 x 480 videos aren’t bad at all, nor are the still images from the 5 megapixel camera sensor. I didn’t think I’d use the digital zoom because they’re typically not all that great, but I’ve gained usable results in the rare instances I’ve used it. The camera is quite good, the interface is intuitive and the new Gallery app is well polished.

9. The overall speed of the device is very snappy. After hearing more about the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform at CES, I expect you’ll see many devices using it, just as the Nexus One does. And you’ll be happy with the performance when compared to the ARM processors of yesteryear. Everything on this handset seems to fly, although it starts to bog down a little when bunches of apps are running. One of the first things I did was to install a task killer, which I use a few times throughout the day. I haven’t used a faster feeling phone. The HTC HD2 uses this same CPU, so I can see why folks are buzzing about how well Windows Mobile runs on it. My expectations of Snapdragon are the reason I haven’t moved to an Android device in the past few months, and those expectations have been met  – and in some cases, exceeded — by the Nexus One.

10. Google Maps is stellar. The app is actually really good on other Android devices as well, and the navigation isn’t unique to the Nexus One. But when paired with this fast running hardware, the performance of Maps makes it feel like the entire globe is within the device, not on a server somewhere. There’s very little lag when panning, zooming or rending. In some cases, there is no lag. The GPS location fix is almost instantaneous as well. All of that combines for a great Maps experience.

11. Google Voice integration isn’t specific to the Nexus One at all, but it’s well done and completely integrated to the contacts and phone apps. It’s working so well that I’m going to look into canceling the unlimited text messaging portion of my monthly plan. From what I’ve heard, that can be done to save $10 a month. There’s simply no need for such a plan or function if you’ve embraced Google Voice.

12. Speaking of contacts, I like the integration with Facebook, which is similar to Synergy on the Palm Pre. And at any point, I simply tap and hold on a contact to get a touch menu of how I want to interact with that person: phone, text message, mail, Facebook or Google Talk, for example. And the phone is smart enough to only show me the available options. If I don’t have someone’s IM handle, it won’t show me Google Talk as an option.

13. Although voice-to-text related, I love how I can tap and hold the search touch button at any time to search by voice. It doesn’t matter what app I’m in — the function is always there.

14. The overall feel of the device has one of those “just right” attributes. It’s thin but easy to hold. It’s not slippery. And it feels well built. It’s hard to describe but if you’re worried about a shoddy, plasticky device, you needn’t worry about it with the Nexus One.

15. The onscreen keyboard is better than I expected once I made a minor adjustment — see item #3 in the “not so hot” list below. I’ve tried the options to add noise for key clicks and also for haptic feedback, but once I got used to the keyboard, I turned both off. What really makes input great is the predictive text functionality. Within two to three keypresses, I can often find the word I want to type in the predictive text area. And in many cases, the proper word is already highlighted in red, so I simply tap the space bar to choose it and I’m on my way to the next word. I find this better and faster than the iPhone, mainly because I have to type more letters on the iPhone in most cases.

What’s not so hot:

1. It’s far too easy to turn the phone on accidentally. I noticed this when leaving Las Vegas on my plane from CES. I had just turned on the Airplane Mode and then shut the phone down. I placed it in my pocket and a few seconds later, I felt the vibration made when the phone begins to power up. HTC and Google should adjust the power-on function so that you have to hold the button for a good second or two. As it is now, a brief, inadvertent tap will fire up the device.

2. Radio reception isn’t what I had hoped. I realize that there may be a widespread issue as Nexus One owners are reporting a signal bouncing from EDGE to 3G and back. I saw that behavior while at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas. I expect that issue to be fixed through a software update, but that’s not the problem. I’m not getting any 3G signal at my home. I checked the coverage maps and I should be getting one, although I am about a half-mile inside the cut-off, per the map. Here’s the thing though: with the same SIM card and exact same location, the Nokia N900 I’m evaluating pulls in 3G loud and clear. A speed test on that device netted me a 2.1 Mbps download. The Nexus One right after that? Not even 200 Kbps, thanks to the lowly EDGE signal. I’m not sure if the Nokia radio is that much better or the Nexus One is simply not as good, but at the end of the day, I really don’t care what the reason is. The result is more important and I’m not thrilled with it. I really don’t need 3G coverage in my house since I gravitate towards a faster Wi-Fi signal anyway, but this radio sensitivity — or lack thereof — has to be pointed out.

3. The touch experience in general is great, but less so with the four touch buttons at the bottom of the display. I’ve found that the touch sensors only respond when touching the top half of these buttons. It’s as if the sensors aren’t quite big enough. At first, this was a major hassle. Once I figured out what was going on, I adjusted accordingly and I’m fine now. But for the first two days, I really struggled. In fact, I’ve noticed that I do better with the touch keyboard by tapping the top half of those keys as well. Maybe it’s just me, but when I shift my touch input up about 1/8″ on either the keyboard or the four touch buttons, I can fly.

4. The screen is easily filled with smudges. There’s no oleophobic coating like Apple’s iPhone 3GS on this device. Seriously, you’ll be cleaning the screen every hour or two if you use this heavily. On the plus side, I have a perfect replica cheek-print on my device if anyone from the CSI set wants one. Maybe my print can make a cameo appearance in an upcoming episode?

5. Related to the screen smudge is challenge of using the usually beautiful OLED display in full sunlight. Even with the brightness up all the way, it’s difficult. AMOLED is great indoors and easier on battery life, but if you’re outside a bunch, I’d suggest caution.

6. I’m going to need a second battery. That’s becoming a common theme on many handsets as we start to use them more heavily as pocketable computers instead of occasional smartphone use. I’m also a believer in having two batteries for all of my devices, so going in to this purchase I figured to double down on power. But folks should realize that using this device often during the day will run the battery down in eight hours or less.

7. Many sites don’t render correctly in the browser in portrait mode. This is an odd and unexpected problem, but one I noticed right away. When I look at various two-column sites, the text column is squeezed in half. Yet when I rotate the device and move to landscape, the text flows across the column normally and is easy to read. It happens on our own site but many others that I’ve read as well, so I don’t think it’s anything specific to our CSS or anything. I hope this is addressed quickly with a firmware update — assuming it’s an Android issue, of course. Here’s an example:

1. The lack of multi-touch in native apps is disappointing, but expected. Since non-U.S. versions of Android devices offer multi-touch — and patent laws are different in those geographical areas — I can only assume that Google is avoiding a legal issue with Apple on this. Regardless of the reason, the end customer suffers. I really miss multi-touch in the browser because the native zooming functions are inferior to multi-touch. I may install the Dolphin browser which offers two-finger functionality.

I could probably go on and on with both lists, but after a week of ownership, I think I’ve hit the main points. Overall, I’m finding much more to like than dislike with the handset. $529 is the most I’ve ever paid for a phone, but I’m not having any second thoughts about the purchase. Aside from being very happy with the unit and having it meet most of my needs quite well, I figure that an unlocked device of this type has good resale value. I don’t anticipate replacing it with another Android unit in the near future, but if I do, I think I’ll recoup much of my investment. And I’ll have done so with what’s arguably the best current Android phone for me.

Related GigaOM Pro Research:

Google’s Mobile Strategy: Understanding the Nexus One

Apple’s mythical tablet may or may not be here, but let’s indulge in last-minute conjecture on what Apple may have in store. So let’s try a thought experiment: a rundown of the 10 things that would guarantee that the tablet is an enduring success.

To begin with, I assume we all know what a tablet device is and what it does. Imagine an iPod touch with a 10-inch screen. I assume, too, that the tablet will run something similar to the touch-flavored OS at the heart of the iPhone — probably iPhone OS 4.0 (which has already been spotted in the wild).

Other lessons will be learned from the iPhone. Sleek industrial design, precious few hardware buttons and oleophobic coatings will feature in the spec sheet. So, too, will accelerometers, magnetometers and flux capacitors.

A cautionary note; despite assertions from unnamed Apple execs that we’re going to be “very surprised” by how we interact with the tablet, take it from an old cynic: It will be nothing like Apple’s 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept device (seen below). It might be similar in form factor, but I guarantee the Tablet has more in common with Apple’s venerable Newton than it does the crazily ambitious platonic paradigm that was the Navigator.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

So with that out of the way, let’s get started with the 10 prescriptions for guaranteed tablet success for Apple, in reverse order:

10. OLED Display I’m sure we won’t get this, and that’s a shame. Sure, we’ll still get HD resolution with an LCD, but the battery will suffer.

9. High-Definition Prowess HD is crucial — 720p natively, 1080p via external screen. It has to manage at least three hours of continuous HD playback on a single battery charge.

8. eMagazine Reader E-book readers are greyscale and dull. An eMagazine Reader offers colors, animations and adventure. (Plus, you can get automatic content delivery via iTunes subscriptions.) The concept below is by Bonnier R&D.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

7. Ubiquitous Connectivity Sounds fancy, but it’s just a 3G radio for connecting to the Net. For an added awesome factor, let’s do it WhisperNet style, with no monthly 3G fees. (Never gonna happen, but what a wonderful dream!)

6. Cameras That’s right, cameras is deliberately plural. One on the back and one embedded up-front for video iChat. Anything less than 5 megapixels, by the way, is criminal.

5. Touch Media You know what we want here — multimedia creation, editing and consumption, all touch-friendly. The retrofitted iPhone’s iPod app just won’t cut it — what we need is a touch-based iTunes. And a touch-friendly iMovie would be very welcome.

4. Multitasking We need real background processes, Apple. No excuses this time.

3. Awesome Battery My dream in terms of battery life would be five days between full charges. But, realistically, this being a first-generation  device, the battery will probably be weak.

2. Apps Actually, apps are doomed. HTML5 will see to that, eventually. Until then, Apple’s tablet needs to run all the apps already in the iTunes Store. Even the fart apps.

So, from an HD screen, Internet connectivity, incredible battery life and support for software to more factors, many things are needed to make the iTablet a success. What’s the one killer feature that will guarantee Apple’s tablet huge and sustainable success?

1. Price It comes down to this. Most sane people will not buy a tablet if they can get a notebook (or an iPod touch!) that does all the same stuff at a lower price.

Of course, Apple may have already considered these things, and there are many other aspects of the iTablet that people are hoping for. While I’m sure we won’t get even half of these wish list (though perfectly reasonable) features, when Steve Jobs eventually makes the much-anticipated tablet announcement, he may convince many people that they need a tablet. If that happens, just check this list again for a brief reality check before reaching for your credit card.

Photo courtesy of Gizmodo. Photo rendering by Jesus Diaz.

Get ready to see the “Glee” kids cry. News Corp. today threatened to drop its broadcast and regional sports programming from Time Warner Cable entirely unless the cable provider forks over more money. (“Fox News” and “Fox Business,” however, are in the clear.) TWC and the owner of the Fox television channels are engaged in a heated battle that pit content against the pipe. But it’s a fight that if it continues, will cause both players to lose.

Cable companies pay for every specialty channel they offer by way of a carriage fee, and in some cases pay retransmission fees for broadcast channels. Those costs are negotiated between the cable company and the content owner, but in recent years such negotiations have grown increasingly nasty, especially over retransmission fees.

Last year, TWC went to the wire during negotiations with Viacom over carriage fees, prompting Viacom to run ads telling cable subscribers they were in danger of losing MTV and “The Daily Show.” Last year here in Austin, our NBC channels were turned off as TWC fought Sinclair Broadcasting over retransmission fees.

Such negotiations are escalating into full-blown fights against the background of web and television convergence that’s shifting the power between content owners and cable providers. The while content owners are gaining ground because they now have a second pipe into the home through a broadband connection, the cable guys still have the audiences and the cachet with advertisers.

If Fox does drop its broadcast lineup from TWC’s 14 million customers, it will likely buy ads telling TWC customers they can find some of the content online at places the Fox web site or Hulu — which would benefit Hulu, in which Fox has a stake, immensely. Fox may also encourage subscribers to purchase an HD antenna for about $50 to get the broadcast channels in HDTV over the air for free.

Either would hurt TWC. Customers that try out web TV and HD antennas and realize it works for them will ask themselves the logical question: “Why pay for cable?” And all that web TV-watching could cause some serious congestion on TWC’s broadband network. Considering how little investment TWC has so far been willing to make in its network, such congestion would be a negative for both the cable provider and its customers.

But Fox would lose, too, as it would have to forfeit the ad revenue (in addition to the carriage fees) that comes with broadcasting such shows on oldteevee. Indeed, until Fox can figure out how to better monetize its web audience, it needs cable.

In the meantime, there’s also a threat that the federal government will get involved, according to a note out today from Pali Research:

While Retrans negotiations are all about leverage, the benefits of leverage to a broadcaster could evaporate if the government chooses to get involved going forward – in turn, a fine line must be walked. Remember, broadcasters are using public spectrum to broadcast and a now Democratic-majority FCC may not be as willing to let consumers pay the penalty for retrans battles the way prior administrations did (whether it be via higher video pricing and/or signal loss).

The entire drama makes Comcast, with its recently inked joint venture and subsequent control over NBC Universal, look pretty smart, as it’s given the cable company a stake in a content company just as content gains the upper hand in these negotiations. It also gives Comcast a revenue stream as this playing field shifts. Without content, TWC is backed up against the ropes and ready to fight.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Time Warner Cable; “Glee” image courtesy of Fox.

Curious what your future phone will look like? OK, so this isn’t some sleek device that interacts with a chip wired into your ear canal, but rather your phone two or three years into the future, which is slightly less visionary, but still pretty cool. I chose the features for this phone based on what I know chipmakers are doing and betting on, but if any of you have a different vision, feel free to lay it out. This is a plausible gadget, but certainly not the only phone.

I also talked to Jeff Brown, a principal analyst at Portelligent, to get a sense of how feasible some of this stuff is, as well as with my colleague Kevin over at jkOnTheRun, who offered up some good ideas around intelligent radio management software and an integrated port for docking the phone. Brown acted as my naysayer when it came to a feature’s drain on the battery. Since folks don’t want to carry a device much larger than an iPhone, battery life is the biggest limitation for most of these features. But if wireless power gets beyond the changing pad stage, all bets are off.

Video: The future phone is going to require multiple ways of moving all the video we want to put on the device, onto a bigger display. For that reason, I think future phones will have an HDMI port and could use future iterations of Bluetooth for video transfer. Brown said that pico projectors that display the handset’s screen onto a wall (which I had hoped to see on future phones) will have to reduce their drain on the battery if they want to make it as a standard feature. I’d also like a second camera in addition to the 8-12-megapixel camera (with digital zoom!) on the back. The secondary camera, which is common in Europe and Japan, would be on the front of the phone and used for video calls.

UI: Capacitive touchscreens like the iPhone offers will rule on the high end, although feature phones will have resistive as well. I think the stand-alone QWERTY keyboard on most smartphones will be gone (and I love my QWERTY) to be replaced with software-based touch keyboards that use haptics to offer a tactile sense of having a keyboard.

Radios: Standard 3G and 4G radios will be on the phone (and they’ll have multiple antennas, too), but all phones will have GPS radios for location and the aforementioned Bluetooth. Wi-Fi will be a common element, and thanks to upcoming chips like Atheros’ tiny, new 802.11n Wi-Fi chip, the Wi-Fi will be fast without taking up valuable space and using up so much power.

Ports: MicroUSB for charging as well as an HDMI port and a headphone jack will all be standard. I like Kevin’s idea of an integrated docking port as my phone gets powerful enough to be the “brains” of a computer system that’s popped onto various keyboard, screen and mouse setups. This allows someone to carry all of her data on the phone and not have to sync it to a companion computer at home or work.

I left off keyboards, near-field communication chips, mobile television and widespread built-in memory capacity that exceeds 32GB simply because I don’t believe future phones will have them, but now I’m eager to hear what you guys think.

Qualcomm has just released a new chip family focused on smartphones, including one that breaks the gigahertz barrier. The chips’ capabilities make clear that the line between phones and low-end notebooks are blurring. They’re based on the Scorpion CPU that is at the heart of Snapdragon chipsets and uses an 800 MHz to 1 GHz custom ARM-based CPU.

This new chip family, the horribly named MSM7×30, can do 720p HD video (encode/decode), 2-D and 3-D graphics, and has surround sound, integrated GPS and a 12-Megapixel camera as well as all the usual trimmings like Bluetooth and Wi-fi and FM Radio 3G (both flavors). On the multimedia front, Qualcomm is playing catch-up Texas Instruments and Nvidia. The new chips work with all smartphone operating systems except Apple’s iPhone OS. They will be launched sometime next year and are optimized for the web experience.

Microsoft, after months of anticipation, today launched its latest digital audio player, the Zune HD. It’s a complete revamp of the device’s previous versions — it utilizes a bright OLED touchscreen, adds a web browser and HD radio tuner, and runs on a new Tegra processor from Nvidia. But while Microsoft hopes to “out-iPod” the Apple line of audio players with some extra features, the question isn’t “Which device has more features?” Rather, it’s “Which device has the features that consumers want most?” More importantly — will Microsoft eventually fold its Zune platform into Windows phones?

I haven’t used the new Zune HD yet, although a review unit is on the way. However, I did purchase the original Zune back in late 2006. In fact, I suspect that I’m one of the few people that owned a Zune before owning an iPod. I thoroughly enjoyed the Zune Pass music subscription that the Zune hardware supports; spending $14.95 a month to rent music was a deal that Apple wasn’t then able to match. That deal sounds even better now — Microsoft includes 10 MP3 downloads a month at no extra charge. But iPod owners who crave musical variation now have plenty of options, too, courtesy of the iTunes App Store; even Real Network’s Rhapsody To Go service was recently greenlighted by Apple for availability there. Meanwhile, Pandora and Slacker offer millions of available tracks to stream. The key difference here is that those require real-time connectivity while the Zune device can store rented music for offline enjoyment.

Both, however, are capable of viewing videos in addition to playing music. ZuneHD owners will enjoy brighter and more vibrant video content than iPod owners thanks to the OLED display used by Microsoft. However, those same Zune HD owners will struggle to use their device outdoors — OLED displays appear washed out in direct sunlight. Aside from different display technologies used, the iPod Touch offers a bigger screen with a higher resolution — it uses a 3.5-inch display at 480×320 pixels, while the new ZuneHD is 3.3 inches at 480×272. On a small screen, those missing 48 lines of resolution aren’t that noticeable and Microsoft figures they’ll make up for it by trumping Apple on larger, high-resolution external displays.

Each device can use an optional A/V dock, but the Zune HD can output high-definition video at 720p through its dock, while a docked iPod can only push content at 480p. Here again, Microsoft beats Apple in technical specifications, but unless consumers plan to carry portable HD content and connect to an HDTV, the point is lost. Eventually, I believe that could happen — I proposed such an idea nearly four years ago — but most households already have several options to get HD content on the big screen. How many of them will need a mobile one, too? (For a hands-on demo of the device’s video capabilities, see the video made by Liz and Chris over at NewTeeVee at the bottom of the post.)

Speaking of connectivity, Microsoft has kept Wi-Fi in the Zune line. This time however, it’s far more useful. The original Zune limited Wi-Fi use to “squirting,” or sharing music from one Zune to another; Microsoft later added the ability to sync music wirelessly from a PC. Now it’s included a version of Internet Explorer for web browsing, bringing the Zune HD closer to Apple’s iPod touch and its mobile Safari browser.

Which brings us, of course, to the big question: Will Microsoft eventually meld the Zune and Windows Phone platforms into a stronger competitor to Apple’s iPhone? The opportunity is there, but it appears Redmond isn’t quite ready. On Oct. 6, handset makers will officially unveil Windows Mobile 6.5 devices and no Zune integration is expected. But Windows Mobile 7 is due in 2010, which leaves the door wide open for a Zune Phone. Such a device would have to offer the best features from both the Zune and Windows Mobile platforms to compete with the iPhone juggernaut. The Zune bits would bring entertainment value to the handset, while the large array of Windows Mobile software titles could instantly create an vast “app store” for the Zune brand. Zune will have a marketplace at launch, but the titles are few. Clearly, consumers crave apps, so why not leverage the tens of thousands created for Windows Mobile?

While Microsoft has clearly matured the Zune HD from its humble beginnings, the extra features are unlikely to have Apple scared. So far, while Cupertino offers fewer features, the market is proving that they’re the right features for today’s consumers.

Companies making products for wireless HD video transmission through the use of the 60 Ghz standard are showing off their wares in Europe, thanks to the European Union’s recent approval of the use of spectrum between 57 GHz and 66 GHz wireless bands for unlicensed commercial use. At the IFA Expo in Berlin today, consumer device firms such as Panasonic, Toshiba and LG Electronics touted adapters or devices that allow for the wireless transfer of large files over room-sized distances.

Europe’s approval of the spectrum means companies that are trying to bring 60 GHz products to consumers can sell them to all major markets. The 60 GHz band is already approved for similar use in North America, the Asia-Pacific region, Brazil, Russia, India and China. International regulatory hurdles can help kill a wireless technology, as was the case with Ultrawideband — or even with WiMAX, some argue. When governments delay or refuse to allow the use of a continuous band of spectrum that matches what other countries allow, it means the chipmaker building the wireless radio has to make a larger, more expensive chip that can tune to several frequencies, or consumer device makers have to make several versions of a product to sell in each country. All add expense.

So the EU approval is great news for those pushing the multiple standards and hoping to use the radio spectrum to deliver HD video. But as for the exact winners, it remains to be seen. A Wi-Fi standard is expected to use this spectrum as well. Several companies hoping to use it for HD video are members of the WirelessHD Alliance, including SiBeam, Broadcom, Intell, Sony and Toshiba, but a rival group, called the Wireless Gigabit Alliance, includes some of the same members and is also planning to use the spectrum for a broader wireless HD video delivery technology. It’s unclear if the products from each standard effort will be compatible. This means consumers may want to wait a bit before investing in a Blu-ray player that can stream their movies wirelessly to their TV using that spectrum.

As a netbook fanatic, you’d think Nokia’s unveiling of the Booklet 3G, its first foray into the netbook world, today would have me doing my geeky dance of joy. I’m waiting for Sept. 2nd — when the handset maker and mobile service provider is expected to disclose the bulk of the device details — before I decide whether to kick up my heels and do a little jig.

It’s difficult for me to get excited about the Booklet 3G as not only is it late to the party, but it doesn’t appear to offer much more than the netbooks already on the market. Case in point: The Booklet 3G will run Microsoft Windows using the Intel Atom platform. I originally thought this might be the next-generation Atom — aka the PineTrail platform — but All About Symbian indicates the CPU is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530. That’s the same processor that’s been available in Dell’s Inspiron Mini10 netbook for the past several months.

The Booklet 3G tips the scales at 2.75 pounds and offers a 10.1-inch display. Nokia says the screen is “HD ready,” which tells me that resolution is likely 1366×768. While that beats the standard netbook resolution of 1024×600, several currently available netbooks can be equipped with the same resolution for as little as $25 extra. A full complement of wireless radios are tucked in the Booklet 3G — 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and HSPA 3G — as well as a webcam, support for A-GPS, and a properly laid-out keyboard and trackpad. In other words, based on the current known specifications, the Booklet 3G is yet another WinTel netbook.

Nokia does claim a 12-hour battery life for the device, but without specifications on the physical battery capacity and the CPU platform, it’s difficult to put that claim into perspective. After all, there are aftermarket power packs that extend the run time of today’s netbook by 50 percent or more. But not everyone wants to carry a battery that weighs half as much as the netbook it powers. And manufacturer battery claims are often suspect in the real world. My latest netbook, a Toshiba NB205, is advertised with up to 9.08 hours of battery life. However, I can only stretch it out to around eight hours in everyday, normal usage.

What could Nokia do or could it have done with the Booklet 3G to make me do my geeky happy dance?

• Be the first netbook on the market with an Intel PineTrail platform CPU, which would offer better power efficiency and therefore, longer battery life.
• Ensure that the 12-hour run-time claim is a real-world measurement. Battery claims are often based on controlled tests that don’t emulate typical usage scenarios.
• Consider an option running Moblin, the open-source netbook operating system project sponsored by Intel. The two companies entered into a partnership this past June to share development efforts between Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo.
• Keep the cost of the Booklet 3G in or under the $350-$399 price range — or find carrier partners to fully subsidize the device.

I expect that Nokia will try to use its Ovi services to help differentiate the Booklet 3G. But Ovi is available from any current computer right over the web, so there’s no “netbook specific” feature there. Without one or more of the options outlined above, Nokia simply isn’t differentiating the Booklet 3G enough from either the netbooks of today or from those right around the corner. Unless I hear more details that align with my four differentiators, my dance of joy is on hold.

Vubiq's Waveguide Radio Module

Vubiq, a startup based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., is offering a chip that has the potential to change the economics for companies trying to ship huge amounts of data over relatively short distances — notably cell providers trying to build backhaul for their wireless networks or companies trying to provide point-to-point bandwidth between buildings on a campus. Six-year-old Vubiq earlier this month announced a radio that vendors can attach to their own antennas to deliver wireless signals for roughly a mile in the relatively uncluttered 60 GHz spectrum band. With it, companies that want to use 60 GHz for long-range wireless could see their chip costs slashed as much as 90 percent.

Vubiq’s waveguide radio modules (the radio sans antenna) is one of several chips tuned to take advantage of the 60 GHz spectrum for delivering high-speed data wirelessly. Unlike other unlicensed bands, such as those used by Wi-Fi radios, baby monitors and cordless phones, 60 GHz is pretty empty because to date, it’s been expensive to make chips that can tune into that frequency. That’s starting to change as companies build their 60 GHz radios using silicon.

The most publicized efforts are coming from the WiGigAlliance and startups like SiBeam that want to use the spectrum to wirelessly transmit HD video and other data around the home. These companies hope to find ways to make short-range radios that can use that spectrum to deliver point-to-point signals within a room. However, those chips are still a few years away, as right now the companies working through the alliance focus on making sure 60 GHz radios will be compatible with Wi-Fi, says Mike Hurlston, director of Broadcom’s WLAN efforts.

While Vubiq makes a chip with an antenna for the consumer device world as well, CEO Adam Button believes there’s a large opportunity in the long-range wireless market, which is why his company built the new chip that customers can buy and outfit with their own antenna. This allows them to customize the chips to deliver long-range wireless signals in the 60 GHz band. Most industrial 60 GHz chips are made from exotic materials that require an expensive manufacturing process. Because it makes its chips using silicon, Vubiq can take advantage of cheaper manufacturing costs and deliver processors that are 10 percent of the cost of those offered by other long-range 60 GHz companies. Button declined to give exact pricing.

Button says this means customers can use Vubiq’s chips to provide wireless backhaul in the millimeter wave in addition to the microwave bands — an imperative as wireless companies move to higher bandwidth technologies, such as Long Term Evolution. Using wireless may be cheaper than laying fiber to the cell towers in most cases. It also may represent hope for the troubled companies that provide point-to-point wireless signals to corporate campuses. Companies like Terabeam or BridgeWave are likely customers of the Vubiq waveguides, judging by an interview with BridgeWave CEO Amir Makleff in Forbes, when Makleff bemoaned the high cost of non-silicon waveguides. As the world goes mobile, businesses like Vubiq that can help a company take advantage of cheap, unlicensed spectrum with lower-cost chips could change the economics of providing wireless broadband. And that means more mobile broadband for everyone.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Amongst all the burning wrecks of the voice over IP startup scene, is it possible that a $40 device hawked on late-night TV may be emerging as one of the biggest VoIP success stories ever? If you believe founder Dan Borislow, that is what is happening with his idea called MagicJack, a simple USB-based VoIP device that Borislow claims will generate $100 million in revenue this year, a market momentum that may spark an initial public offering to help fund his ambitious expansion plans.

Before we get too far into IPO dreamland, a caveat — Borislow’s company, which we wrote about when it was getting off the ground a couple years ago — is still privately held, so there’s no proof behind any of MagicJack’s claims other than your trust in Borislow’s word. That said, Borislow and MagicJack seem to have largely delivered on their main promise of two years ago, to create an easy-to-use, dirt-cheap voice service based on a simple device that you can now buy at Radio Shack or Best Buy.

Following the suggestion of one of the ardent followers of our earlier post on MagicJack — which has turned into somewhat of an ad hoc user forum board — we decided to call Borislow for a MagicJack update. (Even though I have moved on to other blogging locales myself, I am honored to update the GigaOM MagicJack followers.) As usual, the always-interesting Mr. Borislow didn’t disappoint, talking up lots of innovative ideas while dissing Skype as a competitor because of its “inferior voice quality.”

In addition to hinting that an IPO was “something we have in our mind,” Borislow said that sometime in the next year, MagicJack will ship a femtocell device which (he says) will allow users to make MagicJack-based calls from any GSM cell phone — theoretically saving cell phone minutes while in your home. Perhaps more believable is Borislow’s claim that a “major PC manufacturer” will soon include a MagicJack softphone pre-installed, eliminating the need for the USB device now necessary to link the broadband-enabled PC to a standard phone. Borislow also said there is a new device planned that will eliminate the need for users to leave their PCs powered on while making MagicJack calls; unfortunately, no ship date was given.

On the subject of number porting — the ability to switch your current telephone number to a MagicJack account, something the company has promised but never delivered — Borislow said he’d rather weather the storm of user complaints instead of subjecting potential customers to the mercies of the incumbent telcos who might hold their numbers.

“We’ve built up a lot of love over the last year or so, and I don’t want to give that love away [by making people tussle with sometimes-uncooperative telcos],” Borislow said. While he is confident that new FCC rules will help ease the number-porting pain, Borislow didn’t seem too concerned about hitting the latest self-imposed number-porting deadline of late 2009.

He also hinted of some new applications — perhaps VoIP-based conferencing — but there is only so much time and space, so we’ll leave those ideas for a day when they are closer to reality. As far as a potential IPO goes, Borislow said he took his last big company public on his birthday in September — “why not keep that love?” he asked, about using the same date.

Could MagicJack be the next big tech IPO? In this economy, who knows what the rules are? What MagicJack has in its favor is a solid network core and patentable technology. In a public statement earlier this year, Borislow claimed the company had a big network footprint with lots of hardware and interconect sites, and had patents pending for femto equipment based on designs from a chip company MagicJack’s parent company bought up along the way.

Perhaps most important is how many people are actually using the MagicJack, which is still an unanswered question. While Borislow is quick to claim that MagicJack has “sold” almost 4 million of its devices, now at a rate of “10,000 per day,” he won’t own up to the exact number of active accounts, so nobody’s sure yet whether MagicJack has passed Vonage’s base of around 2.6 million in terms of VoIP users, or whether there are a lot of MagicJacks buried unused in desk drawers. Maybe that answer can wait for the MagicJack SEC filings, where we might see exactly what Borislow has up his sleeve.

(Paul Kapustka, former managing editor at GigaOM, is the editor and founder of Sidecut Reports.)

There’s a thoughtful essay over at TechDirt by Derek Kerton comparing broadband pipe providers to gas stations. In it, he argues that sharing wireless networks is beneficial for carriers and consumers alike, because it reduces network costs and leaves carriers free to innovate and improve their applications. The analogy is seductive, but it neglects a key difference between gas and broadband: You can’t stockpile broadband the way you can fuel. When a pipeline springs a leak or shuts down, it can take a few hours or days for it to affect consumers, and in that time repairs can begin and fuel can be rerouted. But if a cellular network access point goes down, akin to a gas pipe springing a leak, it has immediate repercussions for everyone using the shared network, instead of just a percentage of people who happen to have chosen Carrier A over Carrier B.

That’s one reason why regulators aren’t keen to see operators share radio networks, because they realize that these things happen, and having an entire community go silent isn’t an ideal situation. Carriers are happy to share some tower infrastructure, but generally are not sharing their radio networks, partly because they believe it acts as a competitive advantage. Check out Verizon’s commercials to see this in action. The metaphor also seems a bit stretched given that pipelines can carry different versions of gasoline, rather than a truly indistinct commodity product such as what shared radio networks transport. So while there are potential advantages to sharing network infrastructure, both carriers and regulators have balked at creating a shared “pipeline” of wireless service for good reasons.

A group of big-name technology companies including Intel, Dell, Broadcom and Marvell have joined together to promote a new wireless standard that could deliver between 1 gigabit per second to 6 Gbps inside the home. Chipmaking startup Wilocity is also part of the effort.

The Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance plans to use the 60 GHz spectrum, already in use for other types of high-data-rate wireless transmissions, for a variety of functions such as replacing the HDMI cable between a TV and a computer. Other options include delivering wireless gaming and home storage networking. The specification for the standard should be set by the end of this year, and devices containing the chips could be sold as early as 2010.

The alliance expects the chips will eventually be inside everything from computers to camcorders so that large files can be transmitted wirelessly without latency issues. Because the 60 GHz spectrum is relatively uncluttered, and doesn’t pass through walls easily, there’s little concern about interference from overlapping networks.

The downside to this is that the technology is limited to one room, and it generally requires a line-of-sight connection to transmit the signals. The WiGig Alliance (and other companies promoting 60 GHz radios) gets around this line-of-sight limitation by bouncing the signal off walls, and even people, making it less of an issue, unless your living room is particularly cavernous.

The spectrum the alliance will use is a popular one, with companies such as SiBeam using it to deliver uncompressed HD video inside the home based on the WirelessHD standard. The IEEE is also planning to use the spectrum for its next-generation high-throughput Wi-Fi effort, known as 802.11ad. William McFarland, CTO of Atheros, a member of the WiGig Alliance, says alliance members also are part of the relevant IEEE committee and will shepherd the IEEE plans and the WiGig Alliance specification efforts, so that both standards are complimentary.

McFarland also says the WirelessHD efforts are not competing with WiGig Alliance plans, or even with HD video transmission technologies from companies such as Amimon (which uses the same spectrum Wi-Fi does). That’s the diplomatic answer, but the truth is, few consumer electronics manufacturers are going to see value in placing multiple chips that do the same thing inside their products.

WirelessHD and Amimon’s WHDI standard, which are both targeted at transmitting uncompressed wireless HD video (but can do other high-data rate applications in the case of WirelessHD) will find it hard to compete against a general-purpose WiGig standard that can do uncompressed wireless HD video and more. The best things WirelessHD and Amimon have going for them right now are their standards are set and both have products already shipping in the market. But the intrusion of such a powerful alliance in their market is nothing to scoff at.

Streaming HD video may be clogging up the last mile in homes, but in an enterprise setting, it’s not Vin Diesel flicks that are the problem — it’s larger and more important data being stored in the cloud.  Medical records containing radiographic scans or genomic data for cancer research are transferred from corporate offices and university connections over the long-haul network. These records can comprise terabytes of data, which need to travel to cloud storage vendors. Each terabyte contains the equivalent of 100 HD movies at 10 GB each. This massive data migration could drive the deployment of faster broadband networks that will benefit everyone.

The enterprise last-mile networks generally involve faster, dedicated connections as compared to those in our homes. The common corporate link to the outside world, a T-1 line, offers speeds of 1.5 Mbps, and is able to max out at about 15 GB of information per day. According to Geoff Tudor, founder and senior VP of business development and product strategy at cloud storage company Nirvanix, if one assumes a corporate employee generates 3-5 MB of data per day, once you get over 300 employees sending their files to offsite cloud storage for backup, the T1 is tapped out. Over one of the fasted telcommunications options, an OC-48 line with speeds of about 2.5 Gbps, it will still take about an hour to send 1 TB of data.

After it gets through the last mile, data travels over the long-haul networks crisscrossing the country, which are currently being upgraded from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps. The slower long-haul networks can still be 4-60 times faster than the last-mile connections, but still not fast enough for the even more demanding data sets required by scientific computing. Jay R. Boisseau, director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (home to the Ranger supercomputer), is worried that high-performance computing, which deals with petabytes of data, will be left in the slow lane as providers upgrade their long-haul networks with an eye toward the less demanding consumer and enterprise bandwidth needs. When I asked about the move from 10 Gbps to 40 Gbps on long-haul networks, Boisseau scoffed, “Great, now it will take me one day instead of four to move my data sets.”

But enterprise adoption of all things cloud may have a silver lining for Boisseau and the HPC set, as enterprises start sending their own terabytes of data to cloud storage providers. Recently Nirvanix won a contract to store 240 TB of NASA moon imagery data, and Tudor thinks that’s just the beginning of a trend toward terabyte and even petabyte data transfers. Nirvanix has a 1 Gbps connection from its data centers to the web, which Tudor says are kept pretty full, even before NASA’s bits and bytes start coming in. The company is now in talks with carriers to provide cloud storage and build out bandwidth to address the coming network demands that sending fat files over the Net require.

Getting carriers involved will not only get the bandwidth providers directly involved, but companies such as AT&T, Level 3 or Verizon have the trust of corporate customers when it comes to securely and reliably storing their data. That will help enterprises to trust clouds for data storage. Verizon is even trying to get a company to build super-fast long-haul network equipment to boost bandwidth. For enterprises, the next issue is price. Tudor estimates with corporate data growing at 30-60 percent a year, storage for enterprises is going to become too expensive to keep in house. If that happens, bandwidth providers will suddenly have the demand — and a customer who’s willing to pay — for lightning fast pipes. When this happens, science, storage clouds and even your own web-surfing experience could benefit.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, today reminds us that it’s Twitter’s birthday. Michael Arrington, too, writes about the third birthday of the service that everyone is tweeting about. It was three years ago that a chance meeting with Noah Glass led me to write about Twitter, aka Twttr.

Since then, the service that’s estimated to be valued at $250 million has received a $500 million dollar buyout offer from Facebook, and when that failed, made Facebook change its game. It has inspired many books, blogs and a slew of startups that are betting their future on Twitter, the platform. In these depressing times, it is one of a handful of consumer web services people want to write about, talk about and actually really use.

What makes Twitter interesting: It is many things to many people. For some it is a microblogging platform. Max Levchin, founder of Slide (and PayPal), compared it to radio — it doesn’t stop and you listen to (read) what you can. To some it is a content discovery platform. In an interview with The Guardian, I labeled it the megaphone for everyone. It’s also the tool that has kept me connected to everyone who reads our blog. So what does Twitter mean to you?

Follow me on Twitter.

Wow, we’re not even deploying 4G wireless broadband networks yet and ICT Results, an organization that aims to publicize European research, is already pushing the next wireless leap with research promoting millimeter wave technology, also known as microwave photonics.

It’s not as foreign as it sounds. Readers of this blog are familiar with a variation on this technology, known as 60 GHz, which underlies the WirelessHD high-definition video transfer standard. It’s also a technology being discussed by the IEEE for high throughput Wi-Fi. The millimeter-wave band is in the extremely high frequency part of the radio spectrum, from 30 to 300 GHz. It’s a relatively empty band, which is good, but its difficult to make cost-effective semiconductor radios to send and deliver information over this spectrum.

Now, a European research effort is promoting millimeter wave for delivering 12.5 Gbps (note the G for Gigabits here) on telecommunications networks. The ICT Results post says millimeter wave technology has delivered those speeds over “short- to medium-range wireless spans,” but there’s no mention of how far in miles (or kilometers, I suppose) those spans measure. This is an early effort, but one we’ll keep an eye on.

A provision in the economic stimulus package may funnel up to $2.5 billion through the Department of Agriculture to provide broadband service to people who live in rural areas and lack access to high-speed Internet. But any money spent on Broadband Over Power Lines, or BPL, technology, will be wasted. BPL provides seriously slow web access through old power infrastructures.

The BPL enterprise between IBM and IBEC this week identified where they’ll start delivering these services. Since the Department of Ag already gave $77 million in loans last year, it’s likely to give more, as minimum speeds weren’t written into the stimulus bill. As we’ve noted previously, the viability of BPL as a web service was debunked years ago and should have died quietly. Here’s why:

• Power lines weren’t built to carry BPL frequencies or broadband data. Broadband experts have noted that high-speed data needs an ample amount of bandwidth, and power lines, which work best at 60 Hz, are not enough. One current deployment of BPL is pushing data at only 256kbps. That’s not progress.

• BPL interferes with emergency radio. And power lines are unreliable; a simple fault in a conductor could cut off all data.

• BPL won’t be free for rural communities. IBM has floated BPL pricing plans starting at $30 a month, which isn’t too different from those of cable companies, which offer much higher speeds.

• Supporters focus on BPL’s ‘communications backbone‘ role in a smart grid, but wireless tech offers less expensive — and faster — solutions. Burbank, Calif., recently chose Wi-Fi over BPL for similar reasons.

Despite this, BPL has been continually resurrected by the FCC. Despite complaints that the tech was not viable commercially and that it altered the “rights of radio licensees,” the agency approved it. (A U.S. Court of Appeals last year said the FCC did not give a “reasoned explanation” for its sole use of positive BPL studies. )

Federal politics aside, BPL is no step forward for the rural customers who need broadband access. Any new dollars spent on it would be better served funding new wireless applications that are more viable for the future.