After a full week of having my Nextel Wireless Broadband service and card, I must say that so far I'm currently a very happy customer. The coverage within the coverage area that I have traveled is excellent. I have found that in some large buildings the signal is unavailable, but so far this has been rare. In an unplanned experiment on Friday I used the service to listen to the live .Net Rocks broadcast while traveling about 20 miles. The coverage during the trip was solid and I never a missed a minute of Rory and Carl's interview of the Channel9 team.

[It should be noted, that Nextel and Flarion do a great job and make very clear that this device, as with other mobile devices such as cell phones is not designed for user while driving and should only be used when it is safe to do so. In my case, my Tablet PC sitting on the seat next to me acted like a radio without any need for direct attention. Be safe with your mobile devices!]

I have been very impressed with the speed of the device. I seem to typically see speeds of around 900kbps with bursts higher. In areas with very low signal the speed has dropped down into the 400-500 range, which is still faster than many other wireless services. Top speeds have been in excess of 1mbs, and for much of the week has actually been better than the performance of my cable modem, which despite marketing claims of now being twice as fast, has been performing pretty poorly the lately.

Overall I think this product is a great solution. I understand that Nextel is still investigating other wireless technologies before committing to building a national network, but if this is the minimum we have to look forward to, the future of wireless broadband is extremely exciting.

If there are any other software developers out there looking at targeting this type of mobile platform, drop me a note. I think this is a great area of opportunity for field service, real estate, other industries on the go.

Posted in Network | Telephony  | Comments [1] 

Today I received and installed my cT-1000 Nextel Wireless Broadband PC Card. The hardware is manufactured by Flarion. Nextel and Flarion launched a trial in the Raleigh-Durham area back in February and have been expanding the coverage in the triangle area as the trial has continued. The trial appears to have been called a success as Nextel is now offering the product to the public.

Nextel is currently offering plans ranging from $34.99 to $74.99 depending on usage and speed requirements. Download speeds range from 750kbps to 1.5mbps with bursts up to 3mbps possible. Packages also provide private or dynamic-public IP addresses with static IP addresses available for a small fee ($10.00). The hardware is currently being offered for $50 (Regular $199) until June 30th.

I think there is great potential in this product for mobile users that move within the RTP area. While being marketed as "Cable-speed without cables", the result of bandwidth and mobility greatly increases the possibilities for mobile applications. This modem in a TabletPC creates and extremely versatile and well connected platform for software developers.

The setup in my Toshiba M200 went extremely well. In fact, compared to devices I have installed from other manufacturers, this was amazing simply. The process was to insert an auto-starting CD, click next 3 or 4 times, agree to run unsigned code (Which is something in this day and age I think they should correct and instructions should not tell you to ignore those warnings. Get your drivers signed!) and then insert the PCMCIA card. I was connected. Plain and simple.

I haven't had much of a chance yet to test the speed and coverage in the area, but I'll report back when I do.

Posted in Network | Rant  | Comments [0] 

Actually, I really don’t how to describe it in  a word, but it’s pretty nifty. I'm talking about the new Channel9 site from Microsoft.

The main choices are:

Echo Chamber –  A place where the Channel9 folks get to speak through posts on wide ranging subjects

 

Videos –  Described with “Next time your manager comes to you and tells you that you're going to be filming amateur videos, run, run hard and don't look back.” and while not flashy, provide some good insight. I think it’s great that the people making these great products have a way to share and at times explain or set the record straight.

 

Who We Are – Those responsible for this content.

 

Moblog – Photos from inside.

 

Wiki –  The user editable website

 

Forums – A place where in traditional forum style conversations take place ranging from introductions to discussions on content and technology.

There are RSS feeds everywhere which Robert Scoble said that they were even going to list for us all in one place! (He's also got a number of links to much more comments about the site, good and bad) User profiles provide a basic sharing of interests and information while the “Avatar” images give us a personality.

I need to go play some more, but I thought I would share. Check it out!

Posted in Rant  | Comments [0] 

This months guest speaker was Doug Turnure, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft and shared a great look at the "Vision" of Indigo and how we've moved from the start of object oriented programming to the service oriented models that are being put in place today. With the builds in flux as they are since PDC, Doug was unable to show us any live code, but it sounds like the Indigo team is on top of things. There was some good insight into the importance of standards and why Microsoft was waiting on some of them. (Microsoft waiting for standards? Haven't written that much in the past, but I think it's a great sign)

Some key points on Indigo:

 

Services Are Autonomous

Boundaries are explicit

Share schema, not class

Policy-based compatibility

If any of you know Doug, check with him next time you see him and verify if he really encrypted the notes he passed to the girls in school so the teacher wouldn't read them out loud and embarrass him!

It was a great presentation we look forward to seeing Doug back in the Triangle soon.

NOTE - The next MSDN event in Raleigh is on May 4th!

An audio replay of the WSV203 session from PDC that Doug referenced is available here and the powerpoint slides are available here. (If you're interested, all the PDC sessions are available here)

Posted in Longhorn | TRINUG | wcf  | Comments [3] 

Well what a week it has been. Google is going to give away free email with a gigabyte (Or was that a Googlebyte?) of storage, Sun and Microsoft have put aside their differences and reached a 2 billion dollar “framework for industry cooperation”, the charter yacht company that is supply the boat for our May trip to the British Virgin Islands went out of business, and I’ve been just swamped with work. Don’t you just love it when projects overlap like waves and the workload just gets higher and higher, and the world around you seems further and further away? Anyways, I am glad it’s the end of another Friday and I can look back at what this all means.

If only I could do the Bill Gates “Think Week” to gain perspective. What would be my key topics for the year?

• Connectivity – As the availability of wide spread, near constant network connectivity increases that applications and advantages.
• Mobile Devices – To use this network anywhere, you must have a device that you can use anywhere. From Tablet PC’s to Pocket PC’s and smart phones, there are some cool applications just waiting to be written.
• Developer Productivity – And to take advantage of the above the whole “Do more with less” slogan becomes a fact of life as we’re all tasking with making more of these things happen quicker. [This is the category that would include RSS]
• And in all fairness to Bill, yes security is a must. Or as Steve Ballmer would probably say, “it’s a must, must, must, must, must, must…”

Now back to Google and Sun. A gig of space? That’s just insane! You would need to google it just to find anything! And should we really be ok with the potential of such content being categorized for us? Or having adds displayed based on the content? If they could somehow perform a Googlekill on incoming spam it might be worth while.

As for the announcement by Sun and Microsoft, good for them. I think it’s great for the customer to have two companies of their size say let’s cut the crap and get some work done. In the end, isn’t that what’s going to make a difference in the world of technology. Not lawyers and government regulators, but technical innovation that also has the potential to bring financial rewards.

Bring on the weekend!

PS - As for the BVI trip, we've been able to rebook through an alternate agency so all is well.

Posted in Rant  | Comments [0]