It’s easy to install; each computer is assigned a unique identifier. Users can then create password-protected private networks, or join existing ones through an AES 256-bit encrypted connection. The unique identifier is in the format x.x.x.x, so it looks like an IP address to the operating system. Thus, once the Hamachi network has been set up, you can use standard tools to communicate between machines. Shared drives will display in Explorer or Finder, and you can use Remote Desktop Connection or Apple’s Screen Sharing app.

Until recently, the Hamachi client for Windows has been way ahead of the rudimentary command-line tool that was all that was available for Macs. That’s changed. The new Mac version 2.0 sports a spiffy GUI, plus some features that were previously Windows-only, including a way of sending private chat messages between connected machines. There’s also a beta command-line version for Linux.

Hamachi is one of several related products from LogMeIn. We’ve talked about LogMeIn Ignition, for accessing computers from mobile devices; LogMeIn Central, for managing multiple machines in a corporate environment; and web conferencing system Join.me. The LogMeIn website has a wizard for helping users decide which product is appropriate for their needs.

Hamachi is available for $199 per year. The license includes the ability to create multiple networks of up to 256 computers. There is also a non-commercial version that’s limited to networks of up to 16 computers, and a 14-day free trial.

How do you and your colleagues connect remotely?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Who Owns Your Data in the Cloud?

To set up the iTwin, insert the device (with both halves still attached) into a Windows machine. You’ll be prompted to install the software, and to register an email address you can use to disable the device if it gets lost. The two halves are then “paired,” so that they work together to create a connection between computers using 256-bit AES encryption.

You will be able to access one machine from the other, but only if both pieces of the device are installed. For additional security, you can also create a password on the iTwin.

You can leave one half of the device in your office machine, and insert the other into, say, a laptop. You’ll be able to access, move, copy and back up files. You can edit remote files directly, or copy files by dragging and dropping them.

Both iTwin and Pogoplug allow you to connect to your own files remotely without monthly fees, and without using cloud storage. But Pogoplug connects to an external hard drive and makes it available remotely, while iTwin allows you to connect to your entire computer and network. Of course, in order to access a particular machine, you’ll need to leave it on and connected to the Internet.

Of course, there are some security issues to be considered. While iTwin provides a couple of ways to disable the connection if one half gets lost, it might take a while before the loss is noticed. And the connection is bi-directional, so if someone entered your office, they could access your laptop. Frankly, it’s an open question whether the security of this system is better or worse than a software-only solution with strong passwords.

I wasn’t able to fully test the system, since iTwin only works with Windows machines at present, although the developers say a Mac version is in the works. I’ll be interested to see how speedy and stable the system is in actual use, and how well it interacts with Windows’ sleep mode.

iTwin retails for $99 on the developer’s website.

How do you connect with your files while you’re on the road?

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• Enabling the Web Work Revolution
• Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
• Who Owns Your Data in the Cloud?

As I frame my view of where mobile is going, I can’t avoid starting with some numbers I just saw in Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Globally, market intelligence firm IDC counted 269.6 million smartphones sold this year, compared to the 173.5 million units shipped in 2009.

In 2011, we might see half a billion phones sold worldwide. Smartphones will likely blow by traditional computers next year as the way most of the world gains access to the Internet.

If that doesn’t blow your mind, I don’t know what will.

Are you thinking about mobile yet? And if so, how are you thinking about it? Let’s plant our feet firmly on the ground and talk about how you should be thinking about mobile. Here are some guiding thoughts:

1. Don’t think product; think platform. People are excited about devices and apps: that is, products. As a marketer, you need to look at devices and apps as platforms for communication, conversation, conversion; pick your “C” word. Develop your app or apps with that broader concept in mind. Look to integrate mobile into your current marketing mix as a new communications and marketing platform. Don’t try to sell a product now; you can add sales later.

2. Leverage the ubiquity. Smartphones — and more recently, iPads and other tablets — are becoming essential tools. Their ubiquity is going to be unprecedented. We love these devices even more than our laptops. We are bringing them into places and situations we never imagined. There’s an intimacy, a necessity, that these devices are engendering in us. Whether that’s good, bad, or indifferent, it’s our new reality. So, as a marketer, how can you leverage this intensely personal, can’t-live-with0ut-it feeling smartphones generate? How can you be present on these devices in a way that’s meaningful, useful, and purposeful? How can your app be indispensable? Don’t think, “I want to create a cool app.” Think, “I want to solve real problems, offer real solutions, create a must-have feature” for your audiences’ mobile device. Create something essential.

3. Put goals in the driver’s seat. Don’t go crazy and forget the fundamentals of business and marketing. We saw companies forget these when they first went on the Web. They thought that they could spend a lot of money to build a website, and all their business problems would be solved. We have seen similar madness with people getting on Facebook and Twitter without any sense of why they should be there, who they are trying to reach, and what they are trying to get their friends, fans and followers to do — other than “buy our product” or “do business with us.” Without a clear plan and strategy, mobile will become this new year’s huge time and money suck.

Mobile can be a new platform for building brand loyalty, stimulating traffic, and enhancing interaction. Eventually, sooner than we think, mobile will drive sales. If you’re going to “go mobile,” make sure that your efforts are framed by clear and attainable goals.

What will be your mobile strategy in 2011?

This post was inspired by Fred Wilson and his post The Smartphone Explosion which references Seth Weintraub’s post in Fortune about Android.

Image by sxc.hu user mrceviz

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

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• Why the iPad is Right for the Enterprise
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But that’s an expensive task. The U.S. wireless industry is spending $30 billion to $50 billion annually to improve their networks, according to Dan Hays, partner at consultancy PRTM.

Verizon Wireless spent $17 billion alone improving its network in 2009, and AT&T spent about $19 billion over the past year on upgrades. Sprint laid out about half the money for the $14.5 billion it cost to launch its 4G network venture with Clearwire and other partners. T-Mobile said its network improvements have cost less but are in the same ballpark as its competitors.

No one is denying that the wireless data networks are getting crowded and requiring more investments, but one has to look beyond the woe-is-me arguments carriers continue to use for everything. But it’s not a one-way street! Sure, carriers are spending the dollars, but data is bringing in the big bucks too. If it was a voice-and-text world, they would all be beating each other up on low-margin, flat-rate plans, scratching for market share. Data has given them something to cheer about.

Chetan Sharma, an independent analyst and a contributor to our GigaOM Pro research service estimates that U.S. carriers will generate about $165 billion in revenues in 2010. Of the total, nearly $55 billion will come from sales of data services alone.

“The average margins for the US operators are around 37% with VZ and ATT in 40%+ margins overall,” Sharma said. He estimates that the carrier data margins as of 2010 are generally around 40-50 percent. Because their margins are declining, the companies are looking to spend money on network upgrades and use tiered pricing to offset some of those upgrades.

AT& T, which the article claims spent $19 billion upgrading its networks, has been a major beneficiary of the iPhone boom. Without the iPhone, the company labeled as the worst by Consumer Reports would be facing tough times. To paraphrase Johnny Cochrane, if the smartphone is a hit….!

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• 4G State of the Union
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Craig McCaw. Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia

This is the latest in the string of bad news for Clearwire; earlier it was talk about the company running out of cash, and thus, being unable to build out its network. It has cut jobs, slowed down the network build-out and has even started toying with the idea of selling spectrum. There have been reports of conflict with Sprint, the company that’s the single largest shareholder in Clearwire, not to mention looming competition from the likes of Verizon and T-Mobile, which have launched their own high-speed next generation wireless networks.

It’s tough to read what McCaw’s exit means. Some, like Michael Mahoney of Falcon Point Capital, wonder if this means the company is going under. That’s an over-reaction. From what I hear, McCaw hasn’t been that active with the company for a long time. Those in the know think it is a non-event, though it could also be something as simple as Clearwire’s largest shareholder, Sprint, finally asserting control over what is clearly its own future. Sprint currently owns 54 percent of Clearwire. One can only guess that McCaw’s exit is a precursor to some sort of company-defining event – perhaps more money from Sprint, and a management shake-up to follow. Neither Sprint and Clearwire have responded to my queries.

In response to McCaw’s exit, Clearwire spokesperson offered this statement:

Ben Wolff has been named to fill the Eagle River seat on the board in Craig’s place. You probably remember that he was the CEO of Clearwire until early 2009. In terms of business plan, his past role with the company and affiliation with Eagle River will maintain continuity in our leadership and bring to Clearwire a unique perspective on our business and skills that are sure to provide added value to the Company and to our shareholders.

Clearwire is owned by McCaw’s Eagle River Holdings, Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel Corp, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and a sundry group of investors. These companies have collectively invested about $5 billion into Clearwire, with Sprint ponying up the largest amount of cash. It also contributed a massive amount of spectrum to the company.

At present, Intel has abandoned WiMAX. Google’s strategy is extremely confusing, and its increasingly cozy relationship with Verizon doesn’t bode well for Clearwire. Comcast is too busy fending off the FCC and other regulators as it tries to put a bow on its NBC acquisition. The others are simply irrelevant entities, with neither market clout nor financial muscle. That leaves Sprint!

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse recently told me that Clearwire’s WiMAX network was its 4G strategy. In the high-speed wireless future, Sprint would be left naked without Clearwire and its network. If Clearwire fails, you can bet it is going to take Sprint down with it. In the past there has been talk of Sprint acquiring Clearwire outright – a pricey but necessary move for the company. In the words of UBS analyst John Hodulik this is one dysfunctional relationship.

Clearwire went to the public markets and sold $1.33 billion in debt to keep building out their network. Will that be enough? When I recently met with Mike Sievert, chief commercial officer at Clearwire, he argued that the negativity is unwarranted. For instance, he said the recent debt round was a sign of confidence from the market, and gives the company room to maneuver. “People question whether we will be able to raise capital to grow the network, and we have proved them otherwise,” he said.

Sievert pointed out Clearwire has a fundamental asset – spectrum – and that’s what that matters in the end. Sprint, we’ve heard from our sources, is not in the favor of Clearwire selling its spectrum. Nevertheless, in its most recent quarter, the company added 150,000 retail subscribers and about 1.1 million wholesale subscribers, thanks to the launch of the Evo and Epic handsets on the Sprint Network.

Sievert says an average Clearwire USB modem user was downloading about 7 GB of data every month, and the numbers are higher for folks using fixed wireless modems at home. If this is a norm, they and their competitors need more spectrum to support the growth. The company was planning to reach 120 million population points (pops) in over 68 markets by the end of 2010. This means Clearwire can now start attracting new customers in larger numbers.

Will that be enough for the company to stay independent?

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According to their forecasts, about two percent of total mobile network traffic was used for wireless machine-to-machine communications in 2010, thanks to a 46 percent increase in the number of M2M subscribers. I bet the recent bump in sales of Amazon’s Kindle device has to have helped.

In the next five years, the total number of wireless M2M connections is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.0 percent, to reach 294.1 million connections in 2015. By then, M2M as a share of the total number of cellular connections is projected to reach 4.0 percent. “In Q1-2011, we expect that AT&T will become the first mobile operator to reach 10 million M2M subscribers after more than doubling the installed base in the past 12 months, largely thanks to a successful strategy for connected consumer electronics devices,” said Tobias Ryberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight.

The connected devices that use machine-to-machine connections include in-car telematic systems, e-book readers, e-frames, cellular-based security alarms and smart meters with GPRS connections. And that’s only a start! Berg forecasts that the majority of next five billion mobile connections would be hooking into consumer devices, machines and sensors. It’s no surprise that mobile operators such as Sprint and Verizon are betting big on M2M communications and have set-up dedicated units to cash in on this opportunity.

Crowley has been experimenting with local and location for nearly a decade, first at now-forgotten city guides maker Vindigo, then at Dodgeball, a hot social-networking-meets-location startup that he sold to Google. I’ve been following Foursquare since its launch.

Recently, I caught up with Dennis to talk about the importance of context to the future of location-based services, augmented reality and Foursquare itself. Given Dennis is competing with Google and Facebook, it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about specific products and their evolution, but here are excerpts from what was a long, rambling, enjoyable and educational conversation

Om Malik: What is the mission for Foursquare? Are you a social network or more than that?

Dennis Crowley: Google has that noble mission statement: ‘to collect and organize all the world’s information.’ I think a lot of what we’re doing is taking that and putting a spin on it. I think a lot about [things like] how we can build things that really alert people [to] all the interesting things that are happening within the general radius of them.

OM: Sort of like augmented reality?

DC: You know, everyone talks about augmented reality. The version of augmented reality we’re serving up… it’s just like, “Hey, there’s something happening a block away that you should know about. Hey, there’s a cool piece of art around the corner that you should look at. Hey, this is the sandwich place that your buddies are always talking about.” All the little things that we’re doing — we’re kind of building that platform and ecosystem that enable such things to happen.

OM: From an average person’s standpoint, location is still kind of geeky and a lot of work.

DC: Yeah. I think your points are valid; it’s not for everyone yet. The same thing was true of cell phones. But eventually, it’s these things that prove their worth, and they prove how powerful they can be and how much they can affect your lives. And you participate in that: You buy a cell phone; you get on Facebook.

I think people say the same thing about Foursquare, and I’m like, “I know, I know. Don’t worry about it. We’re going to be here for a couple of years and come back to you when you’re ready for us.”

I think of what we’re doing is sort of interesting now, but it’s going to be super-interesting 24 months from now when more people are aware of things that we’re doing and aware of the value that comes out of it. We’re a little bit early.

OM: When was the first time you started to think about location as a contextual vector for data?

DC: The first phone that I had that had the ability was a Sprint phone with a great screen. This was in 2000. First thing I did [was] hack together a WAP site that would allow me to search for places from my phone.

I ended up working for a startup called Vindigo that was doing city guides on Palm Pilot. And I’m like, “Oh my God you have all these people pop in the screen, letting you know which venues they’re going to. That’s a mechanism for popularity, for interest.” This was before a lot of the social stuff was around, but we were thinking, “Maybe we should show the most popular restaurants.”

I got laid off in 2001, and that’s when I built the Friend Finder stuff. There was no language even to describe what we were doing. This was before social networks. Much later, we described it as, “Friendster on your cell phone.” That’s what made Dodgeball take off.

Of course, we brought the stuff to Google, and had an interesting two years there. While we were at Google, we were doing some experiments. Like, can we use game mechanics to encourage people? So we made a leader board. Which of your friends have checked‑in most often? You make this competitive, [and] people go nuts over it.

We started thinking a lot about a history page. Recommendation engines were just starting to get really good then. This [location history] was a good source of recommendation. We couldn’t get that stuff built over at Google.

People are giving us one or two or three pieces of data everyday about the places they go to. We can cut that data up. This is a new way to look at your neighborhood based on the places you’ve been, and your friends have been to. Places that people like you go to. I can look at the East Village of New York in an entirely different way because the Foursquare algorithm redefined the city for me.

We’ve been talking about it for years. Now we have a critical mass of people who are contributing data and willing to play with it. It’s like a perfect storm with the timing.

OM: Right now, Facebook’s social graph defines a lot of experiences. Do you think you will have this world where location just defines all content and data consumption experiences?

DC: The metric I like is that you should be able to stand anywhere in the world and Foursquare should be able to tell you something interesting nearby to do. It’s something interesting to strive for. You are right. It’s not just places; it’s experiences.

I think it’s getting there. The hard thing to figure out is its context. You’ve got the phone as the center [of the network], so it’s collecting all these data points. The next big thing to figure out is what is the contextual relevance of all that? Are you moving? Are you with friends? Where are you? Where have you been? Where are you headed?

All that stuff is interesting. You can take that stuff in and you can use that to make these choices and these decisions and hopefully serve up some interesting content. So, you’re [asking], ‘When is it going to happen?’ I think it’s happening.

OM: How do you think location will be part of our daily life and how it will impact commerce?

Dennis There are three ideas inside Foursquare. There’s latitude and longitude, and the time and day that you’re standing in right now. So this is the thing that’s most interesting to you (as of now.) That’s one of the things that we’re psyched about.

The second thing is the role that game mechanics can play in encouraging people to actually go out and do things they wouldn’t do. That’s a big idea that we’re still in the middle of trying to figure out.

I think the third big idea is the way that you can use a combination of location-based services and social media to empower local merchants to connect with customers in different ways. It’s fortunate for us that it’s one of the things that’s going to be very easy to monetize.

OM: The reason Facebook works is it maps real people together. That’s why its social graph works. You have this notion that mapping real physical places to the web and to people is the next big wave. Why?

DC: Everything that’s going on with social media is about sharing photos and about sharing links, sharing videos and sharing ideas. It’s all great stuff, but it all happens online. I think that’s the thing that frustrates me. It goes back to the core experience we had with Friendster.

In the past, I would spend all this time on my Friendster profile finding people and sharing the profile, and at the end of the day, it was close the lid on your laptop and that was it. It didn’t do anything.

So Facebook is amazing. It’s a thousand times better than Friendster was. But I still don’t feel like it’s working as hard for you as it should be. It’s like when you step away from it, it’s still there, [and] people are still sharing stuff, but it’s not surfacing. It’s not making the way that I interact with the physical world better.

It might connect me with people who obviously live in the real world, but it’s not connecting to me to the world in general. It’s all very abstract. Forgive me for being crazy.

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SCVNGR bills itself a game layer over the real world, and while it offers familiar features like check-ins and pictures, the core of the service is in its challenges: the mini games that people and businesses create at locations. SCVNGR allows anyone to build these challenges, which can be as simple as checking in with another person or as elaborate as scavenger hunt-like tests, like finding an object inside a store or pulling off a trick. Priebatsch said SCVNGR’s different approach is finding a lot of converts; the service, which rolled out in May, is on pace to hit 1 million members early in the new year.

Take at a look at a video interview I conducted with Priebatsch, a fast-talking,  22-year-old whiz kid:

• Location-Based Services — Just a Fad?
• The Enormous Promise of Location
• Is Geolocation a Real Business or Just a Feature?

That trend has many early WiMAX backers worried, and even Clearwire isn’t immune to the idea of experimenting with a new flavor of LTE. Telegeography says that by the end of 2010, there will 11 million WiMAX subscribers around the world but the going is to get a lot tougher for WiMAX. In the next two years, LTE networks will be launched by carriers in 55 countries, and that should jumpstart the growth for LTE-related services. In comparison, WiMAX is going to be relegated to fixed and nomadic applications, instead of being a mainstream mobile offering, Telegeography argues.

LTE, which launched in late 2009, will take about six years to garner an estimated three percent of the total wireless market, Telegeography posits. A lot has to do with the availability of phones that support LTE and other devices that can leverage the wireless broadband technology.

While TeleGeography predicts that WiMAX subscriber growth will continue apace, by the end of 2015 LTE subscribers will outnumber WiMAX subscribers by a factor of more than seven to one. “If you forget all the past hype about WiMAX and focus just on the next five years, it actually has a bright future” said TeleGeography’s Pete Bell. ‘You can expect to see WiMAX achieving average annual growth in excess of 30 percent over that period. Within the next 24 months LTE networks will have been launched by major cellular service providers in some 55 countries, with most other countries following suit over the subsequent three years, he added.

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As part of the deal with Qualcomm, AT&T gets about 12 MHz spectrum of Lower 700 MHz D and E block spectrum in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and 6 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D block spectrum in rest of the country. The total FLO TV footprint covered about 300 million people. The deal will need approval from the FCC and other regulators. (Read new comments below.) Qualcomm tried to find buyers for FLO, but it seems to have decided that selling spectrum was the best option.

“As part of its longer-term 4G network plans, AT&T intends to deploy this spectrum as supplemental downlink, using carrier aggregation technology,” AT&T said in a news release. It’s not clear when AT&T would start building networks based on this spectrum. The deal is likely to close in the second half of 2011, so this looks almost like a 2012 buildout — roughly the time AT&T will start rolling out its LTE network at scale.

The bottom line is that this is a good strategic move by AT&T.  Just as it needed to bolster the bandwidth to the base-stations, companies like AT&T need more spectrum to deliver the bandwidth over the air to mobile consumers. The Dallas-based phone company was recently rated as the worst mobile phone company by Consumer Reports.

Will the FCC Approve?

If  recent history is any indicator, FCC approval for the deal may not come easy. The FCC has become especially queasy about AT&T and Verizon’s spectrum assets, noting in its Wireless Competition report that spectrum assets were becoming more concentrated. AT&T can slow down the deployment of that spectrum at a time when the market needs it the most. In a report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted:

In particular, many stakeholders outside of the top national carriers who we spoke with noted that policies for making spectrum available for commercial use, as well as policies governing some essential elements of wireless networks, favor large national carriers, potentially jeopardizing the competitiveness of the wireless industry.

In addition, FCC was pretty clear about not allowing Harbinger, a hedge fund behind LightSquared network to sell some of its spectrum assets. In March 2010, Stacey Higginbotham reported:

The Harbinger network could help ensure competition among the major wireless carriers thanks to the conditions the FCC has placed on the spectrum that the private equity firm plans to use as part an agreement to let Harbinger take control of SkyTerra  — namely that SkyTerra has to be a wholesaler, and that traffic from the largest and second-largest wireless carriers in the U.S. cannot comprise more than 25 percent of the traffic over the SkyTerra/Harbinger network. This means AT&T and Verizon could not buy up huge chunks of the network or spectrum to keep others off of it.

That is a clear indication on the part of the FCC to take a hard look at spectrum sales to large carriers, especially those that include repurposing of spectrum.

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