Telia is planning to build the next generation mobile network called 4G, and they think they will be the first company in the world to offer its services. A service which is said to be ten times faster than 3g! In Sweden, Ericsson will be developing the technology, where as in Oslo, Norway, chinese Huawei got the deal. Though Ericsson already started building the LTE network there.

Erik Hallberg at TeliaSonera says there will be a commercial launch in 2010 and that they hope to launchvery early that year.

The 4G network technology is also called LTE, but it seems I won’t be having the pleasure of ever using it, unless I go to Stockholm or whatever city they might choose to include in their launch. They say they will be delivering it to high population density areas only, which exclude me. Like I covered in an earlier article about Telia, I can’t even get 3G reception in my house, nor my summer house. Seems I’m pretty much off the map. The Tech Map. Yeah, I get 3G reception a few yards outside my house…

I had to send my iPhone 3G for repair/review last week because of a dead pixel. Well, the pixel wasn’t completely dead, it was more like a walking dead, a pixel zombie if you will. It started right out of the box, when I noticed a pixel was just green (see photo below). A green pixel just sitting there, mocking me. And then… It went away. Go figure.

I spoke with the sales lady at the local Telia store (yeah right, like I have a local Telia store… I have to make an hour drive to find one) on the phone, and she said that because I have such a drive to make each time, she would hook me up with a replacement straight up, so I don’t have to drive back and forth. But by the time I got there, the pixel had gone away, and I had nothing to show for.

So I went back home, went on with my life in a normal paste, and then the pixel went green again. So I ran to get my camera and took a bunch photos and shot some videos to have as proof, so I could have the iPhone replaced, and then called the Telia lady back up and told her all about it. She said that the photo proof would do just fine in case the pixel goes away again (which it did) and I drove over there once again.

But now, for some reason, her promise of a replacement right there in the store, had become null and void. Just like her promise of a loaner, which she promised me before the instant replacement deal, for the 14 day wait to get the iPhone back, and I got slightly ticked off. But I kept my cool as one does, and I gave her my iPhone 3G with its limp pixel and went on home preparing for the wait and to use whatever phone I had lying around (I landed on the Sony Ericsson K750i). And today, a mere 8 days after I took it to the store, I received a text message saying my iPhone was returned from the undead.

Though earlier than expected, it was not a moment too soon. I have missed it so. Productivity went down, and the feeling of being naked went up by the hour. Welcome home my friend. The worst thing about this I think, is the fact that the iTunes Backup application does not remember placements of application icons, so now I have to rearrange the whole thing. That’ll set me back a while. Also, WEP/WPA keys isn’t stored in the backups, which I suppose would be considered more secure than actually storing them, but with no copy/paste… it’s a bitch. I truly, truly despise having to type WEP/WPA keys. Email passwords aren’t stored either. All good, I wouldn’t wanna have them stored.

Oh, one more thing for you to consider if you’re returning/selling your iPhone. Resetting it to default, meaning erasing all the data and settings and what not, took roughly two flippin’ hours! I had not expected that, so standing there in the store, I had to tell the nice lady I’d get back to her after a few cups of coffee at the nearest coffee shop. Which turned in to a very nice lunch, yummy taco pie. Good coffee. Good company.

Everyday there’s a struggle going on in my head about what is really going on in the world, or more specifically in Sweden, as of late. We’ve always been early adopters of technology and often somewhat pioneering some fields. We have 7.2Mbit mobile broadband/3G network (a.k.a. 3.5G a.k.a. Turbo 3G), 24Mbit ADSL broadband for many, many homes via the standard phone jack, 100Mbit and hell, 1Gbit connections for the lucky few.

The struggle that is going on in my head is this: I can not get any what so ever 3G reception for any of my cell phones in my own house, which is by no means located out in the woods. Heck, more often than not I can’t get more than 40% of 2G reception! When I do have full 3G signal, being anywhere else, and do some speed tests, I’m lucky if I hit 1.5Mbit. And now, Telia is starting to test out their up and coming (if tests are successful) 100Mbit ADSL.

I have a 24Mbit internet connection to my house and I’m well below the maximum distance to the connection platform which delivers it, and yet, I can only get a maximum of 14-15Mbit download speed. I’m sticking to download speed in this article, although upload speed is lacking as much. My 14-15Mbit of download speed is commonly considered to be good and that I should be “thankful” for such a good connection, and yet I am paying for, as advertised, 24Mbit. Just like I am paying for the 7.2Mbit data plan on my cellphone.

I spoke with Telia today and the nice lady told me that they are preparing for the tests right now, and if they’re successful, they might start to roll out the upgrades early 2009. And here I am, with no 3G signal in my house. And paying full price for my 7.2Mbit data plan producing a weak 0.2Mbit at this particular moment (and any other giving moment in my house), a 24Mbit internet connection that gives me about 55% of what I’m paying 100% for… When will we stop accepting these outrageous facts? I fail to come up with any other product or service where one might accept a result of a bleak puny percentage of what you pay for and hope to get. Yes, you can always cancel within whatever number of days, but really… What options does it leave us with? Let’s just face it, being connected is becoming less and less a luxurious option in life and more a necessity. A fair comparison could be a phone line, any phone line, mobile or not. Would you pay 100% to get a line 10% of the times? I know so many people who’ve gotten replacement cellphones and discounts on their cellphone bills due to poor reception (that should not be, when comparisons have been made for the case).

A friend of mine had an 8Mbit internet connection producing a mear 3-4Mbit in his house, and after dawging Telia for 6 months he got 6+Mbit all of a sudden. So, shouldn’t we either pay for what we can get, or get what we pay for? Obviously, it can be done.

The nice Telia lady told me that for this 100Mbit upgrade to happen, they need to upgrade the connection platforms, which are located here and there all over our communities. Manual labor it is.

This takes me back a few years to when I called up Telia and asked for the opportunity to upgrade my connection upload speed, a request that was denied with the reason “it’s not possible, the hardware can not produce this”. And about a year or two later, with absolutely no hardware upgrades made anywhere, this was starting to roll out nationwide.

100Mbit ADSL… and not even good cellphone reception in my house… Oh, and I checked something else out. A house dead center in the city, was scheduled to get its connection platform upgraded to handle 24Mbit in late January 2009. It’s just funny I guess… 24Mbit been out for years. Oh, and did I mention the Swedish government used to own Telia?

But joking aside, what it is, is really human negotiation, between the buyer and seller. I asked Brian Kupetz, Director of Development for the La Canada, CA based company Zigabid to tell me a little about what makes Zigabid so unique:

Zigabid allows buyers and sellers to sell entertainment tickets without a fixed price. It’s is the first company to offer a dynamic pricing model for tickets, with many competitors introducing similar features in 2009. The concept is rather simple: tickets are a commodity and should not sell at a fixed price, they should sell like any other commodity in which pricing is market-driven.

The initial feature set we have introduced is a negotiation system which provides buyers and sellers the means to determine a mutually agreeable sale price. The ticket market space is extremely crowded and Zigabid not only differentiates itself from Ticketmaster, Live Nation, Stubhub and Tickets Now by its stock market style functionality, but it is also very transparent about its service fees.

Zigabid is restricted to the US so far, so I haven’t had the pleasure of actually using their services myself, but since I was part of the development, I know that it’s real simple to use. I asked Brian how many tickets their system is currently holding, and he said that they have an estimate of 200′000 seats listed, mostly sports and concert tickets.

On the Boxee blog I read some good news for all of you who’s waiting on the Windows version of Boxee to be released.

Some 200 people have signed up for the pre-alpha testing of boxee for Window, but I can imagine that number will grow rather quickly when word gets out more. Not sure how many testers they’re planning letting in though.

To the general we can add local media scanning, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and CNN and Hulu. For me, local media scanning hasn’t been an issue at all, I’m just hoping that they address the network media scanning and improve that.

Right now, I’m tossed between the super fast network scanning by my Xbox 360 but inability to play all my file types, and the super slow network scanning by Boxee but ability to play all and everything I throw at it. And the fact that I don’t have an Xbox in my bedroom.

Oh hey, Boxee team! You should definitely have a look at the MtvMusic service. How cool would that be to have in Boxee? Buuuut like everything else, if you’re not in the States, you’re not allowed to watch jack. Damn it. They did however allow me to watch music videos for a while when they released the website. Then they slammed the door in my face.

Oh and people, if you like Boxee, you should nominate them for The Crunchies!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

Boxee, my new favorite media center application just announced that they landed a $4 million investment from Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures at 50% each, and this brings me joy and sparkles in my eyes.

Since I last reviewed Boxee, and re-reviewed it, I have really fallen even more in love with this application. I can only assume this investment will bring more awesomeness to the application and the Boxee team. Maybe they can do the network browsing a bit faster, have settings stick (When I change “View” under say Movies, then go up or down a level and back, the View setting is reset). And I don’t know if caching is busted somehow, but thumbnail view is slow as snails. Actually, every time I enter Movies, the system has to think for way too long for me not to get testy. Another thing I’ve been wondering about is if the system respects folder names/structures, or if it uses the media file only for data.

Anyway, on with the good cash flow.

They say their goals for 2009 are:

• grow out of our comfortable closed-alpha cocoon and launch a kick-ass beta
• build even more functionality and content into boxee while making it easier to navigate
• listen to user requests, ideas and frustrations (and improve the product accordingly)
• work with team-xbmc, developers and partners to extend boxee beyond the confines of our limited resources
• finish the year with ~ 1,000,000 users

Not so many concrete goals I have to say. But yeah, we’d like to see improvements… They hit 100′000 sign-ups last week, that’s a good start. Congratulations Boxee!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

So Oblong Industries is developing the g-speak spatial operating environment. Right. I was watching the two videos (below) and it’s just sick. I have no idea really how this is achieved, but it all seems a bit jiggly, but seriously… How cool is that!?

“The g-speak platform is built around free-hand, three-space gestural input. Applications are controlled by hand poses, movement and pointing. Finger and hand motion are tracked to 0.1mm at 100 hz; pointing is pixel-accurate. Two-handed and multi-user input are fully supported.“

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

G-Speak is supposed to offer “solutions to real-world problems” including:

• analysis of large data sets
• operation of three-dimensional interfaces
• construction of efficient multi-user collaborative applications
• integration of large screens and multiple computers into room- and building-scale work environments
• development of large-scale applications that run interactively across enterprise networks

luminous room demos from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

The platform, that runs on Linux and Mac, is apparently already in active use at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, and universities. Here’s a list of application areas:

• Financial services
• Telepresence
• Network operations centers
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Military and intelligence
• Automotive
• Natural resource exploration
• Data mining and analytics
• Medical imaging
• High-touch retail
• Trade shows and theatrical presentations
• Consumer electronics interfaces

I can’t say I understand what all this mean in practice, but it sounds legit. What I would love to see is a hands-on video from either of the above mentioned institutes where someone actually puts this to use with an intent. Maybe we could see a true purpose of this, one we can understand. But for now, I guess it’s all wow-and-awe.

More at oblong.com, CrunchGear and Engadget

I was watching this demo video by Gotta Be Mobile’s author Rob Bushway the other day, where he was testing the Multi-Touch software for Windows 7, and it’s looking… well, far from usable.

But like I said, it’s all pre-beta on pre-beta, and it’s likely to improve drastically before either is released as a final product. It’s cool to see the Windows environment with the Multi-Touch screen, and I agree with Matt Burns that it does look good. But I’m not impressed. It looks incredibly “jerky” as Rob Bushway says in his article. But let’s be patient shall we?

To be honest, I did expect a better performance from a public beta release. I suppose one could argue that it’s the best way to get lots of feedback, but how do you think the feedback would sound on a beta release like this? I’m still hopeful though, and I’m sure like I said, improvements will be made.

But how funny is this guy? He shows us just how “jerky” it is, and sums it up pretty well… Although, I’d have to say that “the fruit” looks far juicier than the software in question.

If you’re running Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude XT, you can download the drivers at N-Trig.com and give it a spin. Please note the spec requirements “DuoSense technology enabled and the Windows 7 pre-beta version installed on your Dell Latitude XT“

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Starts off pretty good huh? OK, before you read any further, don’t get your hopes up. This device doesn’t exist. But please, read on.

You have the voice translator, for those international business meetings. The Pomegranate Phone NS08 gives you an opportunity to save money not having to bring that translator of yours who always drinks all the coffee.

Oh, but wait! You don’t ever again have to be without your caffeine fix again. The Pomegranate Phone NS08 got you covered. Just make sure you bring a couple of those single brew packets and you’re set. The ultimate mobile coffee making device.

So what is this? Well, it’s not a mobile device. It’s an advertisement for Nova Scotia…

Thanks Greg for the tip!

This video shows a short guided tour of the new, improved Taskbar for Windows 7, and I must say, it really looks good. Some of the features could really help improve productivity, if you’re the mouse-browsing type. Personally, when using Windows (XP), I tend to navigate through the system using the keyboard only, so the “Aero Peek” (a.k.a. “Peek” for short) would render rather useless for me. However, I tend to change my way of working with things every now and then. No matter what, it looks and works nicely indeed and I’m certain many will appreciate it. Check it out:

Update: I found this article on Gizmodo where they show us a “hidden feature” called “Aero Shake”. Not sure why it’s referred to as “hidden”, it could as far as I know always have been there and nobody noticed it. Or if you have to activate the feature as it might have been turned off for beta testers (hence “hidden”), who knows. I just think it’s truly awesome, a really really good idea. It’s one of those things that stands out, and might even think “Ha, not even Mac OS X does that”. Judge for yourselves: