Your personal safe haven

I just answered a friend's question about convergence. Which led me back to a point I raised a couple of years ago*.

As the customer experience in a converging environment gains in seamlessness and fluidity, a sense of unease may be growing. Yes, as expected, the home and the office won back part of their central role. Yes, as expected, a main personal device allows you to switch seamlessly from a residential to a nomadic to a mobile mode. But at the same time, you are more and more led to grow what I call your "main ID" on distant servers.

Nowadays, social networks services get a major slice of that aggregate. It used to be your e-mail service provider, your homepage host or your blog dealer. It may be someone else tomorrow... and not necessarily that Microsoft-Yahoo! 800 pound gorilla (the latest Alien-Predator flick, or rather the latest 70s-90s revival).

But there as well, convergence is on the way. And the consumactor will be torn between the one-stop shopping need of a centralized management and the fear of leaving his most precious personality to one greedy corporation.

To me, beyond the access commodity, the core of the value shall lie at that level. And the best service providers will have to be as efficient, independent and trustable as top private bankers in charge of precious diversified portfolios (ie cultural rights, databanks, IDs...).


* see "Open Spheres, Personal Spheres, Shared Spheres and Safe Heavens" (20050520)

Sideloading live concerts

Nokia claims that 75% of mobile music downloads are actually sideloaded via the PC. So while competitors launch "traditional" online stores (PlayNow for SonyEricsson), the Finns teamed up with Universal Music Group to offer "Come With Music" packages : a sexy name for a classic hardware + 12 month subscription package... except the service is unlimited music downloads, and the mobile operator is out of the loop.

Orange Music Store eventually tries to catch up with the Vodafone platform, but at the same moment SFR Live Concerts puts the bar one notch higher. Vivendi must have noticed that the business models of music majors are changing, that album / track sales go down while live events and merchandizing go up. Majors are trimming off their catalogues, renegociating contracts, competing with concert producers, and building participating platforms to scoot new talents across the web 2.0.

So Live Concerts makes sense. So did SK Telecom's Auditions 6 years ago...

Back To Square Auctions

AT&T and Verizon trembling, Vodafone sweating, Cox, Cablevision Systems Corporation and EchoStar waiting, Qualcomm peeping, Google smiling... and the FCC counting the billions...

... Welcome to the 2008 700 MHz wireless spectrum. A few blocks up for grabs*, 214 potential bidders, and no winner will be known before the end of the whole process.

Some losers have already made the headlines, or rather the frontline of an obscure web page : "01.12.08 Frontline Wireless statement - Frontline Wireless is closed for business at this time. We have no further comment." Which means Frontline Wireless is already out of the race, and out of business without having ever been in.

This is a wild race and a wild world. We are talking wide and deep coverage : this spectrum will help go through large areas, through walls. The FCC even proposes a "Tribal Land bidding credit" for someone who would care for uncovered reserves. How generous from an organization that optimizes the chances of a 2000-2001 redux.

We're talking CLEC of the wireless kind, FMC and the whole shebang. We're talking about scared incumbents in the mobile as well as in the fixed areas.

Back then, T-Mobile would add a few rounds in the German auctions - totally unnecessary, except for the government. I guess they wish they had that money right now.

Chances are the biggest winners won't get one bit of spectrum at the end of the day.

Meanwhile, France is discounting the entry ticket for its fourth 3G license.


* 1,099 licenses overall - Block A : 176 EA (Economic Area) licenses - Block B : 734 CMA (Cellular Market Area) license - Block C : 12 REAG (Regional EA Grouping) - Block D : 1 national license for public / private partnership - Block C : 176 EA (minimum bidding price : USD 4.6 bn). The 698-806 MHz band was freed by TV broadcasters switching to DTV.

CES 2008 - the magic boredom

An environmental nonsense with a yearly electrical parade where people expose gadgets and all the chips nearby casinos turned down ? Exclusive features and contents that tend to turn into commodities (neon signs, Cirque du Soleil shows) ? That's Vegas, and it sounds sooo passé.

If you missed the best Western Movie Award (the flick was over even before the generic started), here's the pitch : Warner kills H.D. DeeVeeDee and picks Blu-ray.

The 15 Warholian Minutes Award went to Wistron and its GW4 Android smartphone. Google's rival didn't get as much attention, but at least those who heard about Yahoo! Go 3.0 learnt that a 1.0 and a 2.0 existed before. That was a good way of advertising about that status update feature.

And from day one, the winner of the Corniest Showman Award is Bill Gates. Yeah, the same guy who didn't realise the internet existed until 1995. Here he is now, on stage, talking about the "second digital decade"... and this great visionary sees more video and more storage ahead. I can't wait to see what other disruptive insights he'll deliver after retiring.

For Jobs on Viagra, stay tuned for at least two more decades. That will include a 5 year break to found a new pet project ("NeXt2NeXt"), and a comeback right on time for the launch of iHologram.

PS : a happy new year to you IRL

Rock n' Knols

At Google's, a knol is a piece of knowledge wrapped up in one webpage. Adsense and all Google Labs toys welcome. Everybody's invited, and one can easily imagine something like "tell us what you know about ABC" popping up each time you type "ABC" in Big G's search box.

At Google's, knowledge doesn't have to be checked. This ain't no wiki stuff : you can claim the Earth is flat and was invented 6,000 years ago, you can say Obama had an affair with Oprah and Osama, you can praise your sect and hire a new PR manager devoted to knols, no one will challenge it.

At Google's, volumes speak. Nevermind quality. Actually, with AdSense and Knols, Big G is bound to replace Wal-Mart as the biggest private employer.

Let's make it straight : Google Knols is the anti-encyclopedia, the mother of all hoaxes, an insult to the knowledge society. "Google will not serve as an editor in any way, and will not bless any content. All editorial responsibilities and control will rest with the authors. We hope that knols will include the opinions and points of view of the authors who will put their reputation on the line. Anyone will be free to write. For many topics, there will likely be competing knols on the same subject. Competition of ideas is a good thing." For business, you bet.

The aim is not to compete with Wikipedia but to prevent Wikipedia from appearing all the time at the top of Google's search results. Instead of wasting the best advertising space, Big G will demultiply it and the beauty of it is everybody will do it for free.

Google is definitely not "[putting its] reputation on the line" : Google just doesn't care about its reputation.

Money can buy many things (including spectrum), but the era of a beloved Google seems over.

Facebooked up

Here they are, popping up each time I log on : friend requests, vampires invitations, werewolves invitation, zombies invitations, IQ test invitations, survey/petition/vote invitations, petrolhead invitations, optical illusions requests, movie rack invitations, bookshelf invitations, visual bookshelf invitation, brain game requests, moods invitations, music invitations, hatching eggs invitations, pillow fight requests...

I don't fell like becoming a werewolf, nor the "booze friend" of a soju addict. I don't feel like drinking that "Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster" concoction either. And I certainly don't feel like exposing my LinkedIn contacts without their approval.

I don't mind exposing part of my self, though - what is blogging all about ? But I don't feel so confortable with Facebook. Something to do with this closed face / open book thing, I guess...
What I do appreciate is the virtual answering machine function. Not the application, but the whole shebang ; Facebook's platform in itself. Now there's that virtual me taking care of incoming calls and spam. My homepage takes a break, and anyway most of the comments on my blogs are outsourced to the various media that relay them.

Lets me plenty of time to focus on the IRL / In Real Life side of existence. True food, authentic sweets and tricks, genuine friendship, and the mothers of all killer apps, love and life.

VizaOzavi and other bull's eyes

What's in a name ? With zaOza*, Vivendi decided to drop 2 "vi"s at the edge of Vizzavi, and to add a bull's eye in the middle. Like : this time, I don't want to mess around but to go for the real thing ?... Maybe they purchased Activision to enhance their eyesight and optimize their chances to hit the said bull's eye.

Vodafone and Telefonica are into better targeting too : the Anglo-saxon leader and the Latino leader took a stake in Amobee Media Systems, a mobile advertising joint.

The Shoogle application must target Parkinson disease victims, blurring the frontier between handsets and handshakes. Next time you go to the pub, don't forget to fill her up with scotch.

SMobile Systems targets the soft spot of mobile linux : the first Android app is as sexy and useful as Norton. SecurityShield is the name, paving the way for developpers the game.

Elsewhere :

- NFC takes the tube - the London Underground before a greater coming out ?
- Outdoors, the OFCOM allows UK Broadband switch from TD-CDMA to WiMAX. If they can make it, that is. WiMAX seems to be losing ground in the US, where Verizon picks LTE.
- Korea keeps migrating at high speed : HSDPA claims 3.2 M subs end of Q3 2007 (2.02 for KTF). Users are discovering the beauty of (U)SIM cards and the easyness to drop a handset or an operator for another.
- Turned down by Sprint-Nextel (while KTF and DoCoMo snatched each 17% of U Mobile in Malaysia), SK Telecom takes 38.89% of Hanaro Telecom (including a 25% market share in fixed broadband). SKT discovers true convergence even later than Vodafone - and postpones a much needed boost in internationalization.


* the commercial name of "Vivendi Mobile Entertainment : Vizzavi's Second Life ? " (20070526)

Kindle Kindle little star - take my Word

The first of its Kindle ? Over the past decade, we've seen much nicer ebook readers than Amazon's ugly $399 gizmo. The size, weight, shape, vertical scrolling, the next / previous page system, the keyboard, or E Ink are cool, but Kindle is definitely not meant for LG Shine nor iPhone lovers - even though one may find a couple of book readers* among those.

And anyway, the aim of the game is not to propose the sexiest device but to set the standards for ebooks. Beyond hardware, this is about softwares, formats, DRM... and sustainable business models.

And this is truly wireless. Not Wifi but CDMA2000-EVDO (as usual, Sprint Nextel provides the radio for a new disruptive player). But the customer won't be charged for airtime.

This is not a phone but a reader with a restricted connectivity : the main revenues are supposed to be books. A New York Times Best Seller or New Release will sell for $9.99, and overall, there are over 88,000 books available in the Kindle Store (amazon.com/kindle). And Amazon has already been a 99¢ store for paperless short stories for over two years**.

Compulsive readers could help Jeff Bezos break even, but he still needs to make sure all buyers will actually use the device on a regular basis. Usages that bring the dough, not like reading on and on the same thing (including The New Oxford American Dictionary included in the purchase).

Well. This reader has a rather restricted connectivity (dubbed "Whispernet"), and the only way to read something that wasn't imbedded is to access or download it over the air. Amazon offers all you can read Wikipedia.org, and you can browse for hours the store - no doubt other things can be ordered this way, but no card reader for book readers, and the capacity is limited to 200 titles (500 to 800 k files). AmazonKindle kindly declines files that are neither Word documents, nor pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG), nor HTML, nor TXT.

You can download such files through a personal kindle e-mail at the rate of $0.1 each. That's a start. You can subscribe to blogs and news services from $.99 / month each. That's getting juicy. And Amazon can bring partners or open the web step by step and cent by cent as they please. That's smart to start from such a low point, but I'm not sure everybody will follow all the way.

Whatever. The proof of concept would help Amazon export this service to all other devices. And turn 3G handsets and PMPs into even more multimedia players***. Come on. You don't need 3G just for a 500 to 800k file every other month.

* I mean actual books, not the Bridget Jones / Devil wears Prada / Shopaholic series.
** see "Google Mob (pay .99 for the unshorted version)" (20050823)
*** after all, you can already use your PDA or iPod or iPhone as a sort of ebook

Android Paranoid takes a LiMo

First step towards "commercially deployed" Android handsets (H2 2008), The Android Software Development Kit (SDK) is to be revealed tomorrow by the Open Handset Alliance, a Linux based initiative involving Google and 29 more or less famous members : When you open a handset, what will you see then ?

1) 2 charismatic netcos not used to this kind of initiatives : eBay and Google.

2) 4 manufacturers : struggling Motorola*, swift HTC (used to paving the way for new OS sponsored by wealthy players), and the usual Korean duet LG* and Samsung* (putting eggs in any basket popping up anywhere - the question is which one joined first to get the other one moving). Moto, LG and Sam were members of the LiMo Foundation, but so were NEC and Panasonic, not to mention Ericsson (without the Sony part).

3) 7 operators : NTT DoCoMo*, China Mobile, T-Mobile, KDDI, Sprint Nextel, Telecom Italia and Telefonica. That's an impressive crew and customer base, but these people are not always used to working together. And a most eminent Founding Member of LiMo didn't climb on board of that one ; Vodafone clinched a different kind of deal earlier with Google (KTF and Softbank also passed that move, but DoCoMo also speaks for the former and the latter prefers a Disney mouse than a Linux pinguin these days). France Telecom snubbed both initiatives.

4) a flock of enablers : Qualcomm*, Broadcom*, intel, TI Audience, Marvell, NVIDIA, SiRF, Synaptics, PacketVideo, Esmertec, Ascender, LivingImage, NMS Communications, Nuance Communications, SkyPop, SONiVOX, Aplix Corporation*, Noser Engineering, TAT - The Astonishing Tribe AB, Wind River*.

5) a pinguin, which didn't need all this mess to exist.

6) a new "tech" label or brand : Android.

What's in a name ? An android is a robot made to resemble a human being, and should respect Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics :
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Android is not a cute name. It's rather scary than sexy. But it's real. Not just hype. Something you build to achieve tasks. Say - you want to get some burdens off the shoulders of i-mode developpers, for instance. Say - you think Orangeworld and Vodafone Live are sexy and you want to make them look corny or obsolete.

So you bring two big names from the web. But these are also enablers facing tough competitors. Will the whole ecosystem follow ?


* these members of The Open Handset Alliance (openhandsetalliance.com) are also Foundation Members of The LiMo Foundation (see "LiMo - stretching Linux Mobile" - 20070223).

MLB's DRM fastball : too fast too furious

Allan Wood is furious. He spent about 300 bucks on Major League Baseball game downloads but cannot play anymore because the organization decided to change the rules in the middle of the game. No warning, no strike call, you're out because our new DRM system prevents you from using those old tools. Nevermind the fact that Mr Wood cannot play a game where players are compelled to use wooden bats.

But the MLB knows a PR bomb when it comes across one, so all the Woods of the hood will be allowed to download the new versions for free.

On that one, the MLB definitely pitched a tricky fast-and-curveball. Too fast too furious. And this is truly DRM 101 : make sure your first base can swallow the pill before moving to second.

What's in the pill is another story - you can boost the performances but the user eventually has to pay for it (doesn't he, Mr Bonds ?)

Payez mobile, at last

If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere. It's up to you, France, France...

Europeans were getting jalous of their Asian counterparts : while NTT DoCoMo, KTF or SK Telecom could do whatever they wanted in the finance area, European operators were caught in a stalemate with powerful financial institutions.

And nowhere was the issue more sensible than in France, home to the GIE Carte Bleue, the powerful lobby that brought you Moreno's smartcard but delayed the emergence of contactless and mobile payments for more years than needed.

So make no mistake : the "Payez mobile" trial is a turning point likely to set the pace for the continent and well beyond.

It just started (1,000 testers and 200 merchants expected overall in the cities of Strasbourg and Caen) with an aggressive TTM for full launch (2008). It will make more headlines during the Cartes & IDentification 2007 exhibition between the 13rd and the 15th of November in Villepinte.

The casting couldn't be much better :
- all 3 MNOs (Orange*, SFR, Bouygues Telecom), the most bank-compatible M-VNO (NRJ Mobile, a JV involving CIC bank, which already tried the concept earlier),
- the elite of French banks (BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole including LCL, Credit Mutuel-CIC Group, Caisse d'Epargne, La Banque Postale and Societe Generale), and
- the World's dominant credit cards (Visa, Europay / Mastercard), both sponsor members of the NFC Forum

Not to mention the French Government : this trial is under the umbrella of the regional TES cluster (Secure Electronic Transactions), which will certainly help this initiative play a key role in standardization at the European level (cf SEPA - The Single Euro Payments Area project).

On the technical side, another eminent member of the NFC Forum, Gemalto-Oberthur, provided the SIM cards and software.

Because this is SIM-based NFC. At a secured crossroads where both banks and operators put a lock on their valuable consumers.

This is about micropayments and the substitution of cash and the unsuccessful Moneo smartcard by the most personal and popular device, but who cares about handset manufacturers for such a trial ? No need to put those guys in a loop banks and operators took so long to weave.

Secured crossroads, double locks and narrow loops... the tie is tightly knotted around the customer's neck, but also between partners bound to cohabit on a tiny chip. Let's do business over the counter first - over the network is another story.

Let us not forget about that other success story of mobile payment, much less violent and involving Vodafone and Safaricom in Africa : M-PESA, a smart and simple but literally peer to peer system perfectly adapted to places where no banker ever set a foot (don't expect to communicate with one in your nearest field, nor even dozens of miles away), and where the very concept of metropolitan area network doesn't make much sense.

* France Telecom intends to keep the edge in certain strategical fields : they led the first trials in Rennes back in 2005 and are just starting another one in the same city for 2 months with 35 users. Main application : public transportations (bus and subway operated by the SNCF and Keolis). Bonus : a Tag 2D application (NFC chip on SNCF posters for passengers or ad viewers to download informations).

Aloha's long goodbye, Standards Wars Episode 4G and the phantom menace

Here's AT&T's farewell gift for Aloha Partner, a phantom company full of spectrum, meant from the start* as an empty shell for sale : $2.5bn.

Here's the ITU's gift for WiMAX promoters : OFDMA / 802.16 joins FDMA, TDMA and CDMA in the IMT-2000 3G family just on time for the IMT-advanced kick-off. The 3GSM crew already knew this promising rival would be casted for Standards Wars Episode 4G, but this means intel & Co are here to stay beyond a phantom menace.

Here's 3's gift for Qualcomm : the Skypephone uses the Brew platform. San Diego joins Cupertino in the hype zone. Up North, Redmond is just starting to scratch the surface - a third Halo and a phantomatic 1.6% of Facebook**.


* see "Hiwire - Aloha Partners, Goodbye Stranger" (20060502)
** see "Microsoft outpervasived by Facebook and RIM" (20071025)

Microsoft outpervasived by Facebook and RIM

1.6%.

That's the best Microsoft could get from Facebook. In the news section, the integration of Facebook on Blackberry sounded much more disruptive. The king of pervasiveness is being "outpervasived".

The fact is it's getting more and more difficult to resist to FB's platform (I haven't been very faithful to LinkedIn lately).

Microsoft tried to avoid losing face but didn't win Facebook either.

FB got $240M from Redmond, WA. Without selling its soul to the Devil. Actually, the said Devil is not as scary as it used to be. Commoditized. Still dominant on his home turf but as clumsy in new environments as it used to be more than a decade ago with the internet.

Internet Explorer killed Netscape, but I don't think MSN will wolf that one down that easily.

While Microsoft is neither losing face, nor winning Facebook, Google and Murdoch try to explain why MySpace is not part of the virtual estate bubble.

Femtocell Hotel

To the question what kind of connectivity hotels will provide 5 years from now, I answered this :

- all best hotels will offer optic fiber connections to their hosts.

- but people will still need a wireless broadband connection of some kind (tuning in from your smartphone or smartPDA or smartwhatever is easier and can get quite addictive*). And something more secure and powerful than WiFi should definitely make it to handheld devices within 5 years. And some MNOs will get even better at this kind of service.

- I believe many smart users will always carry some sort of femtocell to tune to whatever broadband connection they get, even without a laptop.

* even for a Parisian : I'm routinely roaming from one free hotspot to another on my Velib'

Google Jaiku kentai ?

I don't care about the Gphone anymore than I did about the iPhone, but I do care about Google's vision about mobility and to me, dealing with Multiverse or purchasing Jaiku makes more sense than manufacturing devices.

Devices are about status, but you want to care about actual status : how are your friends doing, where on earth are they, what are they plotting, with whom...? Your personal network is much more important than your carrier's network, and portability will come some day for anything from a technical point of view, so value is to be made beyond the tools.

Besides, there are too many tools out there. Including in Google's portfolio. I hope they will take less time to boost Orkut and Google Maps / Google Earth with Jaiku than they did to implement basic Google tools in Blogger.

Yet, I'll stick to Big G for the blogging platforms. And I'll keep building Chinese walls with other e-mail services providers and interpersonal spaces like LinkedIn or Facebook.

F-VNO : dead on AIRAVE all ?

A $49.99 Samsung CDMA femtocell with a $30 / month service for a household ($15 for individuals) including unlimited VoIP for all calls generated within the gizmo's reach (supposedly 5,000 square feet). In Denver and Indy right now and nationwide by the end of Dubya's second term, that's Sprint AIRAVE.

All Sprint customers can use your AIRAVE (3 at a time) but need to subscribe to the service to enjoy unlimited calls.

And oh. YOU provide the broadband access by cable or DSL.

The F-VNO (Femtocell VNO) is born.

OVI - a door facing Windows

Another sign of global warming ? Penguins are spreading over new territories, and Linux becomes a major threat for Windows Mobile, already struggling against the leading OS Symbian.

And leading handset manufacturer Nokia recently created MOSH (MObilize and SHare), "a content sharing site where community members upload, distribute and manage content to be viewed and enjoyed on mobile devices".

In real life, Mosh happens to be "a type of dance characterized by audience members aggressively pushing or slamming into each other". The word also sounds like the French slang for "ugly".

All this could perfectly define the mobile arena right now.

Cornier than ever after the successful launch of iPhone in the US, Nokia delivers a new concept called OVI, supposed to give another chance to such failures as N-Gage and leverage from such charming initiatives as MOSH. No synergies with Twango yet, officially.

OVI means "eggs" in Latin but also "door" in Finnish. So NokNok's answer to Windows Mobile is the killer combo of a fragile door (OVI) and an ugly portal (MOSH).

I can wait to try it.

Google Sky : the limits ?

Are we talking innovation there ? Google Sky is a Google Earth extension ; a view of the universe from our good old planet... a flat universe, like the wall paper imagined by ancient civilizations.

All right, you're looking at beautiful shots taken from the Earth's best observatories. And you'll need a Universal Positioning System to find location RA: 18h18m54.0s DEC: -13°50m0.0s - that's Star Queen Nebula, a.k.a. Eagle Nebula, Pillars of Creation, IC 4703 (take Interstate 15 all the way to Planet Zorg - warning : no gas station on the way).

But I expected something more thrilling*. A 3D experience with a sketchup flavor.

OK that's a little demanding. Why not launch a Google Web then, the 3D mapping of all websites ? I saw such beautiful blossoms a decade ago.... Today's medusas would look even more beautiful.


* never mind the bugs, like finding your saved places in the sky's map at launch (now I know MOT, LA is located in Auriga near Messier 38).

SHOW time for KTF

KTF launched SHOW, its WCDMA service, last March 1st. The 1st Million mark was passed on July the 6th and 10,000 newcomers are joining every day (1,277,000 end of July 2007). "WCDMA" is now a cooler label than EV-DO in Korea. And it shows in KTF's end of July figures : during the last 3 month, its market share remained stable despite a 245k subs growth, but EV-DO subs were down (-45k). The 2-3G migration goes on (3G representing 52.8% of total, up from 47.4%) but furthermore, this confirms the CDMA migration has started, even at the 3G level (EV-DO down to 43.2% from 44.3%, WCDMA up from 3.0% to 9.6%).

Enough with boring figures. From a marketing point of view, you just need to know SHOW is the first real answer to June, SK Telecom's cool brand launched with EV-DO ages ago*.

As the name tells us, SHOW targets entertainment lovers in their 20s rather than business segments. And there is that "play" feature in the "O" of the logo. One third of subs use video telephony, especially couples. So KTF decided to launch, after the success of Movie Tariff Plan (1 free movie ticket per month included), a Movie Tariff Plans for Couples. And while they were at it another one for SMS addicts.

International Roaming (traditionaly restricted to the 2-3G CDMA world before) was another major sales pitch, and KTF announces more developments with partners DoCoMo / Conexus Mobile Alliance and Microsoft. Non-handset devices with USB connectivity are mentioned.

I guess it's time for KTF to propose something more relevant for business targets.

http://www.show.co.kr/ / http://www.conexusmobile.com/

* note that, unlike KTF, SKT declares no specific plan for migration to WCDMA. But the mobile leader is obviously and at last preparing triple play solutions with cablecos and fixed broadband players. As usual with a content flavor ("cable TV programs" are mentioned).

Nokia's summer heat waves and iPhone floods

The beauty of manufacturing handsets is that when something goes wrong, figures tend to make any blimp look spectacular.

Take Nokia, for instance : 46M is not a Total Recall for them, but a big chunk of a whole year of production nonetheless. And unlike Mattel, this is not about dealing with cheap Chinese providers : Matsushita Battery Industrial is not your usual quick and dirty partner, but their batteries manufactured between Dec. 2005 and Nov. 2006 tend to overheat.

Just like iPhone fans ("fans" as in afficionados, not the rotors which were hit by smelly matter at the Finnish giant's headquarters) : they tend to overheat for this beautiful device that pushes hype up to the sky - some people call that phenomenon "Skype" and actually, iPhone users can now call through a service called Skype. Technically, it should be dubbed Three Band Billiard VoIP : one share for your operator, one share for Skype, and one share for an obscure service / solution / gizmo provider. Trickier than tromboning and hardly cheaper than pre-Reding intra-European roaming.