There’s a lot to criticize about the new video calling service from Apple, FaceTime – that it isn’t interoperable at the moment, that it works only over WiFi, that you must have an iPhone 4 to be able to use the service, and so on. But there is something that FaceTime does for Apple that all the rest of its innovations in the latest release don’t: it separates it from the pack of Android devices. Think back on Apple’s previous
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 19th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
Steve Cheney started guest posting on TechCrunch. In one of his posts, he states that Apple’s strategy of vertical integration is ingenious: Perhaps the best example of this so far is FaceTime, Apple’s take on video-calling. FaceTime makes video-calling on the Android-based Sprint HTC EVO look silly, because the EVO awkwardly requires users to sign up and download a third-party app, then launch it every time they want to talk. Normal people simply won’t do this. Apple eliminated this friction
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | July 12th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
There was a writer I really wanted to quote on my telepresence/SciFi post – John Scalzi. Only problem is… he doesn’t write stuff that look or smell like telepresence. Or video conferencing. Or even video chats. So how happy I was when I finally got to Scalzi’s Zoe’s Tale on my science fiction reading queue. It was really great; it hit me right around the time I declared that PDAs have won over mobile phones. You see – John Scalzi,
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | April 22nd, 2010 | Filed under Technology
The Nexus One, just like the iPhone and the rest of the “smart” pack, comes today with some impressive hardware: a large multi-touch display; WiFi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity; a 5 Megapixel camera; GPS, accelerometer and a few other toys that I probably missed. Whenever an iPhone is about to be launched (the latest iPhone OS 4.0 is a good example), a slew of blogs spew out posts about what they believe is coming out in the new version. Martin
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | April 21st, 2010 | Filed under Clients, Technology
I’ve been doodling around with a shiny new Google Nexus One in the past couple of weeks – an “upgrade” from my corporate Nokia N85, which was a BIG “upgrade” from my old Nokia 6210, which was an “upgrade” from another Nokia phone. I’ve placed “upgrade” for a good reason here on the list – it’s simply because with each new phone came a better “experience”, but with a huge compromise. And the Nexus One is me saying that I’m
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | April 8th, 2010 | Filed under Clients, Technology
It’s time to call it out – PDAs have won over mobile handsets when it comes to our future personal mobile devices. A few years ago, the debate was quite heated – do you invest money on a smartphone or on a PDA? Will the PDA conquer the mobile phone markets or will phones evolve to doing what PDAs are capable of? Today the most heated battle is raging between Nokia, the gorilla of the mobile phone market, and
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | April 1st, 2010 | Filed under IPTV, Technology
Google now offers two separate operating systems: Android OS – used by smartphones out there, ported by companies onto a bunch of other consumer electronic products including netbooks. Chrome OS – a browser-based operating system, which essentially lives within the browser. Oh, and people are starting to think of placing it on netbooks as well. Why would any sane company go and invest their resources on two operating systems that just… do the same? Which OS would
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 28th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
It’s not every day that an opportunity falls in my laps not only to talk about something dear to me, but also to have a press release accompany it. And when opportunity knocks, who am I to say no. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve published a press release about MediaTek selecting our 3G-324M stack for their system-on-chip solutions for handset vendors. I thought I would share with you a short story of what went on behind the scenes… A
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | January 20th, 2010 | Filed under Clients
There are three ways in which a service can be provided on a mobile handset these days: it can be integrated, downloaded or served from “the cloud”. The multi-Million dollar question is – which one is going to rule? A few years back, the only real way for a service to be noticed on a mobile device was by having it as an integrated part of the handset from day one. But these days, especially after the iPhone became the
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | December 14th, 2009 | Filed under Clients, Technology
I am definitely not a gadget freak – the mobile phone I use is the corporate Nokia 6120 classic and I am happy with it (!!!), but I am a workaholic – so, at home, my laptop is always open, the VPN is always connected, and I check my corporate email account frequently. Why am I telling you that about myself? Because some people think WiFi VoIP is going to replace 3G calling. Michael Graves, for instance, thinks DECT is
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 5th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
