In the New York Times

It’s been a couple of weeks already, so this is old news in the age of Twitter. But the fact that Simon and Andrea were featured in a New York Times story more than justifies the delayed post.

Robots like Simon are probably decades away from leaving the research lab and heading to people’s homes, but I have no doubt in my mind that it will happen. These kinds of stories give people a taste of what’s to come.

Very cool.

The AT&T MicroCell Scam

The last few weeks have been incredibly busy, so no blog posts from me since more than a month ago. But it’s time to get back on track, and I have a great topic to get me pumped up about writing again. It’s a rant (I’ve found that my best posts are rants).

I’ve been a happy owner of an iPhone for more than a year, and a fairly unhappy customer of AT&T Wireless for the same amount of time. One of the big problems with AT&T for me is that signal strength in my house is very poor. Dropped calls is something I am used to.

Fast forward to yesterday. I checked my mailbox and one of the letters I got was from AT&T. It was actually one of those glossy brochures filled with stock photography – you know, what they usually send you when trying to get you to sign-up for new services or products.

This time AT&T was promoting a product that I could really use – a 3G MicroCell. Main selling point: it increases signal strength at home. Cost: I don’t remember exactly, and it’s not too relevant. What’s important is that AT&T charges extra for this device, on top of the plan you already have.

All very well, but let’s get this story straight. AT&T owns a network of cell towers that is obviously not able to handle the load in some cases, and does a very poor job sending a strong signal to my house. I am a subscriber and pay around $170 a month for subpar service (iPhone family plan).

Now, AT&T is trying to sell me yet another product/service that wraps around their suboptimal cell coverage, so that I can finally use my cell phone at home reliably.

What’s wrong with this picture? This is like buying a brand new car and discovering that it starts intermittently in some parts of town. After talking to the manufacturer, you are told that there’s nothing they can do except sell you another device for $30/month that connects to your ignition system and addresses the problem for good. I am not the only one unhappy about this.

This MicroCell offers some other services, but their primary marketing message is “Five Bar Coverage in Your Home”, service mark.

AT&T should offer me this MicroCell for free. Watch out AT&T, there are many other players in this industry and I have a feeling they might eat your lunch one day if you are not careful. Too bad the telecom and airline industries share customer service expertise with each other.

Hello, Autom

My friends Cory and Erica recently unveiled Autom, the weight-loss robot, at an entrepreneur event in Barcelona. It looks great:

You should check their web site for more information. The robot is based on Cory’s MIT research and Erica plays a key role in design.

Palm Pre Looks Good

Here’s a video demo of the Pandora app on the Palm Pre.

Not bad at all. Hopefully, I am going to have to eat my words.

More videos here.

The Future Is Now

About a month ago I posted David Merrill’s video presentation at the TED conference. David was in the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab (he just graduated), whose director is Pattie Maes.

Pattie has been working on augmented interfaces and interactive environments for years, and thanks to a smart group of students and a confluence of cheap technologies becoming available, she’s beginning to realize many of her ideas.

And it’s very fun to watch. In this video, Pattie is center stage but the real star is Pranav Mistry, the graduate student who put the technology together.

Sit back and enjoy.

Your Table Is Ready

Here’s a nice little service that just makes sense. If everyone now carries a mobile phone, why don’t restaurants just give you a call when your table is ready? Or send you an SMS?

That’s the business ReadyPing is in. I like it. It’s focused on solving one small problem well by recognizing that an opportunity for a better experience exists. $34.95 per month for restaurants.

Beaming An Address To Your Car

Once upon a time MapQuest offered the leading mapping technology on the web. Then Google Maps came along with a much better product and I am sure MapQuest has been struggling ever since. In fact, Google Maps is so dominant that it’s even surprising that MapQuest is still around.

Today, however, I was sent a MapQuest link and found a really innovative feature on the service. It’s the “Send to OnStar” link. If you have an OnStar account, MapQuest can send the map directly to your car’s navigation system. No more printing directions, or retyping addresses. It’s a very elegant solution.

Of course, in order to use the feature you must own a fairly new GM car and pay for the OnStar service, which is not cheap. But if that happens to be the case, this is a really compelling reason for going to MapQuest instead of Google Maps.

Sifting at TED

David Merrill, a good friend from MIT, recently showed his Siftables project at the excellent TED conference/event.

It’s a wonderful idea, a new paradigm for HCI and a great illustration of how much you can do when you start embedding computation into everyday objects. Siftables are so versatile because “blocks” are so versatile.

Another thought that came to mind after watching the video was how the Siftables follow the MIT Media Lab tradition of delivering research work that’s much more than a scientific publication. The Siftables are ready to go to market, the “wow” factor is present from the beginning and that is clear.

iPhone 3G Will Kill Palm

For the last two years, I’ve been tied to a 2-year contract with Verizon. I’ve got a Razr, which might have been a premium phone in the past, but leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. The software is horrible, the phone is completely locked up, Bluetooth is severely crippled. The list goes on and on.

So, next July 13th, when my contract expires, I am going to walk into an Apple store and get myself a new iPhone. I’ve been thinking about getting one for a while now, and the price drop makes it so much easier to take the plunge (even though the voice+data plan will be “considerably” more than what we pay now). In fact, we will probably get two phones, one for me and one for Andrea.

$199 is a really good deal for this phone. It’s now competitively priced with the Blackberry and offers the functionalities that smart phone users demand (Exchange compatibility among other things). On top of that, you have the great Apple design, hardware, media ecosystem and an incoming onslaught of third-party applications. It’s definitely a good package.

If I were Nokia and RIM, I would be getting seriously fidgety by now. This is a tough game to play and my guess is that the first casualty in the smart phone wars will be Palm. They’ve been struggling for a while. What about Windows Mobile? They will probably stick around longer since they are subsidized by Microsoft’s other money making machines. Apple’s been making the right moves and their media exposure (ads, iPod momentum) sort of eclipses the competition.

Bug Labs and Open Source Hardware

I’ve been meaning to write about Bug Labs for sometime but never got around to doing it. This will be a good post to end my month-long hiatus from blogging.

Bug Labs is developing a programmable platform with hardware modules such as GPS, camera, LCD display and more. The cool thing about these modules is that you can put them together and build anything that you want with them.

Want a home security system? No problem, just plug the motion sensor into the Bug Base, write some code and you are up and running.

Think of BUG modules as programmable LEGO blocks with really special functionalities that you can tap to build your very own product. Here’s a short video from CES 2008, where these guys also got a show award.

It’s great to see something like this out in the world. The open source/community hardware idea is a good one and I hope they do well. The only wrinkle I see has to do with their limited market – geeks, techies and makers. But they must have done their homework and understood that the market was good enough for them.

More videos on the site.