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“Pizza or cell phones?” – Observations from CTIA Wireless 2008

By Lori Sylvia
VP, Corporate Marketing
Red Bend Software

“Pizza or cell phones?” asked the taxi driver, when I stated that my destination was the Las Vegas Convention Center. To her, the fare was the same, but my answer would direct her taxi to one of two shows taking place at the Convention Center last week. Perhaps I should have said “pizza”…

“If you're a pizzeria operator looking to improve your business or if your business provides equipment or services to the pizza industry, you've come to the right place. You'll find networking, learning, great deals, and just plain fun at International Pizza Expo® - the World's Largest and Oldest Pizza Tradeshow.”

Who doesn’t like “great deals” and “fun?” Compare that with:

“The convergence of more than 1,100 exhibiting companies, dozens of industries, and over 40,000 professionals from 125 countries all working toward the common goal of revolutionizing wireless. Whether in broadband convergence, enterprise, advertising, social networking or entertainment, CTIA WIRELESS 2008 is the global marketplace for connecting wireless and YOU.”

It’s ironic that the show billed as “The Most Important Global Technology Event of the Year” wasn’t eventful at all. I know I’m not the only blogger to make this observation. The lack of “big news” from the operators, OEMs and Internet players last week was noticeable by all. Still, there were three things that I’ll remember from CTIA last week.

The busiest booth had to be Xohm. No matter which day or what time of day I walked by that booth, it was always buzzing with people. It’s no wonder that Xohm had so much interest, given all the anticipation created by the news that Xohm and WiMAX in general have had over the past year. At one point I overheard someone ask, “How do you pronounce the name?” To which the nice lady at the reception counter said, “With a Z – ‘Zome.’ ” Now, who says trade shows are not good for branding?
I attended the IDC Breakfast on Wednesday morning. IDC’s Shiv Bakhshi, who is always a lively and interesting speaker, observed that people used to say “Content is king” but now people are saying “Context is king.” He made the whole room laugh when he said the conflict in the Middle East could have been prevented if only Abraham was holding a cell phone when God spoke to him, then we might know the exact location of the Promised Land.
At Yahoo!, they were promoting version 3.0 (still in beta) of their Yahoo! Go mobile application and offering on-site downloads. I took the bait, and handed over my new AT&T Tilt. Except that I was told that my phone didn’t support 3.0, only 2.0. Seems that Yahoo! Go 3.0 isn’t available yet for Windows Mobile devices – that was coming soon. I wouldn’t have access to all the new widgets and functionality being offered in 3.0, but I decided to download 2.0 anyway to check it out.

Again and again we see this same problem faced by ISVs, no matter how big or small, that their time to market and addressable market are affected by the fragmentation in mobile platforms. Two of my colleagues—Morten Grauballe and Richard Kinder—recently co-authored an article on this topic that is definitely worth reading, especially if you’re an ISV. Morten is also scheduled to speak on this topic at Handsets World in Berlin, June 10-11, in a presentation called, “The ISV Reality of Deploying Software and Services on Mobile Phones.” At Red Bend, you can see we’re passionate about this issue, not just from the perspective of the ISV but also how this affects OEMs, operators and consumers. This is precisely the challenge that we help the mobile value chain to overcome, and if you want to learn more, you can read about our vRapid Mobile™ product.

But enough of the shameless plug… back to my observations… once Yahoo! Go 2.0 was downloaded to my phone, I immediately powered it up to check it out. What was the first thing I tried? The map tool of course. I identified my location as Las Vegas, and then I could search for businesses nearby. Like pizza shops, shown in the example on Yahoo!’s promotional graphics. But I already knew where to go for that.

Labels: CTIA, Handsets World, mobile, Red Bend, wireless

posted by Red Bend @ Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - 8:41 AM 0 Comments

The “Short Blanket” Effect – Engineering Challenges in Implementing FOTA

By Sharon Peleg
Founder and CTO
Red Bend Software

Updating mobile firmware is not a simple task. Some have compared it to updating software on a PC, but there are in fact many engineering challenges that make updating mobile firmware much more difficult. While the generator running on a PC in the office can practically enjoy no resource limitations, the design of the update process on mobile devices must take into account the lack of any auxiliary data, lack of extra storage to be used as temporary buffers, lack of RAM in some cases and a much weaker CPU. Ineffective approaches could easily lead to conflicts between the various resources, and result in the “short blanket” effect – if you pull it from one side, the other side is left uncovered.

When evaluating, testing and integrating FOTA on mobile devices, manufacturers and operators should consider the following:
· Speed, accuracy and predictability of update generation
· No spare flash memory on the device
· Fault tolerance
· Size of the delta file and update package
· Positive user experience
· Updating compressed firmware
· Type of flash memory

In this blog entry, I will address the first three.

Speed, Accuracy and Predictability of Update Generation
The update algorithm must be fast enough to generate updates at a reasonable speed and should provide sufficient feedback to allow proper understanding of the behavior of the update process on the device. Another equally important requirement is the need for the update generation to be predictable. It is not only sufficient that the generator will produce a small update when few changes are introduced to the source, it must do so consistently.

No Spare Flash Memory on the Device
The fact that there is no spare flash memory for building two side-by-side alternating versions when updating the new version (as some embedded devices can afford to have) leaves no option but to perform an update in-place. In-place delta-updating is challenged by limited spare flash and RAM resources to hold the new version.

Fault Tolerance
When updating firmware on mobile devices, it is crucial to assume that the process could be interrupted at any point in time due to a power failure. Power failure during flash re-programming not only can corrupt the written flash sector but also leave the device in a useless state. In addition to having to be both in-place and fault-tolerant, the process must run at maximum speed to minimize downtime. Fault tolerance requires writing additional data when updating in order to maintain the integrity of the persistent data at any point in time. The challenge here is to minimize writing data in order to minimize the number of re-flash operations.

Learn more about implementing FOTA in our new white paper, “Principles of Updating Mobile Firmware Over-the-Air”.

Labels: FOTA, mobile, software

posted by Red Bend @ Monday, September 10, 2007 - 12:31 PM 0 Comments