50 Ways to Go Wireless

Picture this Monday-morning scene: You roll out of bed, awakened by the smell of coffee brewing at the time you preset the night before. Without thinking, you twiddle with your e-mail reader on your way to the kitchen. The cordless phone rings and you answer it, simultaneously popping a breakfast burrito into the microwave. Your dusting robot whirs into action, nudging your toes as it sucks up bits of plastic food wrap that have fallen to the floor. The picture-frame TV on the wall above the bathroom sink begins to blare on schedule, along with the surround-sound system installed in every room in the house. Your cell phone burps for your attention beneath a pile of clothes. The robot goes awry for a brief minute as interference from the microwave and roam-phone scrambles instructions broadcast from your home vacuum base. Is this progress—or chaos?

Wireless devices continue to proliferate in our daily lives, from the remote entry key for our cars to the equipment we use for cooking, communication, commerce, transportation and information processing—and this is just the beginning. That’s why we’ve put together 50 ways to think about wireless, spanning optimal architectures to anthropological impact.

8 Platforms to Watch

[click for larger image] Fossil offered its first PDA watch in Summer 2003

The next big shootout will occur in the burgeoning Internet-enabled wireless market, where the number of cell phones alone sold each year is in the hundreds of millions. Manufacturers and providers aren’t locked on a particular OS—nor do they care to be. While Sun Microsystems moves to create a cross-platform development and deployment environment, individual handset manufacturers hedge their bets, embracing Java and pushing their own APIs.

1. Tuxia’s Nanozilla: The first commercial release of a Mozilla-based browser for Internet appliances and embedded systems, it uses the Gecko engine for fast layout and the small-footprint Kaffe Java Virtual Machine.
   
2. Picsel: Picsel Technologies’ offering extracts content and layout into a proprietary eFIF format, which is optimized for thin clients and can be accessed, formatted and viewed as Microsoft Word, PDF, PostScript, HTML, Flash, AVI, QuickTime, MPEG, Java and WAP. Most notably, NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode subscribers will be viewing Picsel on their phones.
   
3. Opera: The still-evolving, cross-platform, fast-running Norwegian browser has a small but passionate following on the desktop; for babyface screens, Opera Software offers Small-Screen Rendering to reformat Web pages. Opera partners include Kyocera, Nokia and Optimus.
   
4. Symbian: This London-based concern, owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Motorola, Psion, Samsung, Siemens and Matsushita, makes the mobile OS that everyone’s watching. Symbian supports W-CDMA, Java MIDP 2.0, multiple primary/secondary PDP contexts and bidirectional text (Thai, Arabic and Hebrew).
   
5. Palm: Palm OS has the lion’s share of the PDA market, but Symbian’s breathing down its neck as phones outpace other devices. Palm’s venerable OS is at version 5 and offers Bluetooth connectivity, conduits (synchronization and exchange objects for client/server apps), Web clipping and a novel Web services toolkit developed in conjunction with IBM.
   
6. Macromedia’s Flash: Will Flash do to MIDlets on the handheld what it did to applets on the Web? This popular animation and interactive application development platform is now slated to run on DoCoMo’s 505i series, bringing its trademark visual panache to the cell phone.
   
7. Qualcomm’s BREW: When you buy BREW, you buy a complete support infrastructure: Not only do you get the NetFront browser, you nab a development environment and testing, deployment, billing and tracking support for their CDMA technology. Plus, a J2ME implementation for BREW is in the works.
   
8. Linux: A panoply of PDAs, starting with the best-known Sharp Zaurus, boasts embedded Linux as its OS. Other impressive devices include tablets, wireless access points, IP phones and telematics. Indeed, the first Universal Mobile Telecommunications System test car is a Mercedes-Benz S 400 CDI, equipped with PCs, two retractable 15-inch displays and wireless keyboards. The Dodge Super8 Hemi concept car is another penguin-packer, with an “Infotronic system” based on four networked PCs running embedded Linux.

4 Tips for J2ME Development
For full tutorials, go to http://wireless.java.sun.com/midp/ttips/.

[click for larger image] NASA Ames Research Center powers its “personal satellite assistant” prototype with a Pentium III/Linux combo.

1. Obfuscate your Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) applications to protect source code from reverse-engineering and streamline file size. Among your options for shielding and shrinking J2ME JARs are the open-source ProGuard and IBM’s JAX.
   
2. Avoid out-of-memory errors and sluggish document exchange by compressing XML into binary form. One common encoding option? WBXML, which can be generated and read by the open-source kXML parser—but the server must know to expect non-text XML. You can sometimes even skip WBXML and use DataInputStream and DataOutputStream classes for encoding simple messages between a Java client and server.
   
3. If you don’t want your application to run into trouble, stick with the J2ME subset of core classes. Pasting pieces of J2SE into your source could call other methods native to J2SE that are absent in the mobile edition. However, extensions, façades and other tricks can help you create classes that can run on both platforms.
   
4. When internationalizing and localizing a J2ME application, create separate JAR files for each regional version—you’ll hog too much device memory with a single, universal JAR file.

6 Trimming Tricks
Keep fit—many devices can’t run apps larger than 50K.

1. Delete classes that provide functionality the user can possibly do without.
   
2. Remove inner classes and anonymous classes that otherwise add bloat when compiled.
   
3. Take advantage of the mobile edition’s preinstalled classes.
   
4. Simplify inheritance trees and avoid abstract classes.
   
5. Be brief in naming packages, classes, methods and data members—use an obfuscator to shorten them.
   
6. Avoid array initialization where possible—you’re better off keeping the data in a string or binary file and accessing it at runtime.

10 Etiquette Enforcers
The next killer app? A program that imposes a soupçon of politesse on the wireless hordes.

It’s way past time to take off the (white) gloves and get tough—to nix the nagging whine of the cell phone in restaurants, in the theatre, on the road—and always at the most maddening moment! We offer a 10-suggestion head start on your Etiquette Enforcer application—to create features that stick the civil back into our wireless civilization.

1. Place the vibration ring feature on a visible on/off button smack on the front of the phone, instead of burying it in mysterious multistep menus.
   
2. Some things are better seen than heard, especially in public places, so make text messaging a snap for users.
   
3. Trigger a telltale beep when the speaker’s volume exceeds polite norms.
   
4. For a phone linked to a PDA, create an automatic turn-off or vibration mode to kick in during public engagements that would benefit from the blissful absence of inane, jaunty ring tunes.
   
5. Design a sensor that shuts down the phone when its owner wanders more than 20 feet away.
   
6. Some people think that talking in a restroom stall affords some privacy. Guess what? They’re wrong. Help to establish standards on which public places should automatically turn phones off.
   
7. Speakers, wouldn’t it be great if, at a flick of a switch, all cell phones turned to vibrator mode?
   
8. And, while we’re at it, don’t let them receive the call—send it automatically to voice mail.
   
9. Can you determine if a person is multitasking? If so, can you stop them?
   
10. Detect when the driver’s behind the steering wheel, and automatically forward calls to the dashboard phone.

6 Steps to Secure Your WI-FI LAN
Wired Equivalent Privacy is a joke—but not on you.

[click for larger image] Will disposable phones be next? Inventor Randice-Lisa Attschul thinks so.

Wireless Fidelity is a pretty name for a gory set of wireless-networking standards, the most common of which is IEEE’s 802.11b, ratified in 1999. But the standard security shipped with all Wi-Fi hardware, a system called Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), is somewhat of a joke. But if not for the way Wi-Fi LANs operate, WEP wouldn’t be so funny. Wi-Fi access points—the boxes that sit between wireless users and a wired LAN—broadcast their existence to the world, making them easy to locate. With a range of 100 to 500 feet, access points often give workers network access in several adjacent rooms of an office. Unfortunately, that offer sometimes extends to the parking lot and nearby street, as well. Here are simple ways to shore up against airborne attack:

1. Move your access points to locations that aren’t accessible from outside your building, typically closer to the building’s center.
   
2. Never use the open (no security) mode, which is most access points’ default setting.
   
3. Develop a user security policy to match your security architecture. Users can defeat even the most well-planned security system.
   
4. Don’t use WEP, Wi-Fi’s standard security mechanism—instead, use WPA (Windows Privacy Activation) or your VPN (Virtual Private Network).
   
5. If your access point can be administered via wireless links, turn off that capability. Administer your access point via wired connections only. Also, never use the default administrative password provided by your vendor.
   
6. If your access point allows it, turn off the broadcast of the Extended Service Set Identifier and choose a hard-to-guess ESSID. This will make it harder

   for hackers to connect to your access point.

—Jason Levitt, InformationWeek

10 Socioeconomic Scenarios
Esoteric apps that detect human fertility or alert police to a carjacking already exist. What’s next?

[click for larger image] Larson Camouflage makes palm-tree cell towers.

1. Smart mobs: Armed with pagers and location-aware PDAs, protesters can quickly disperse and reconvene, eluding the authorities.
   
2. Diet and bad-habit minders: Detecting radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) from a list of predefined products the user has sworn to avoid (cigarettes, alcohol, donuts), the device sounds an embarrassing warning and records the infraction. Courts might use this technique for repeat DUI offenders.
   
3. Customer monitoring: Marketers observe consumer patterns of buying, sleeping, eating, radio listening, driving, physiology, exercise, travel, ad infinitum via multiple modalities (phone, camera, heart monitor, MP3 player)—and rent or sell the data.
   
4. Extreme CRM: Absolutely everything, from parking meters to movies to groceries, will become part of a buying club in a move to create segmented, targeted markets. Conversely, customers or devices can find each other, federate and negotiate pricing with gas stations and stores.
   
5. Subliminal messaging: Some Korean cell-phone users are already downloading subsidized ring tones that repeat advertising slogans. Indeed, the market for downloading personalized sound effects at $1–$2 a pop has already topped $1 billion globally. One of the most popular ring tones? Sounds that mimic bodily functions.
   
6. Multitasking-induced mishaps: New disease models will emerge around wireless devices, including connectivity addiction, accidents, sensory overload, stress, deafness, stalking and repetitive motion injuries.
   
7. The spectral divide: Despite congressional mandates that the radio frequency spectrum currently being sold at public auction by the FCC go to diverse constituents, the bulk are bought by existing broadcasting and telecom empires. Hot-spot activity mapped in Manhattan already shows a distinct drop-off in Harlem. The unwired will become the new haves—and the wired the have-nots.
   
8. Military intelligence: Witness unmanned spy planes and self-healing fields of hopping mines (mines that communicate with one another to determine if a breach has occurred and then propel themselves via a spring-like mechanism to fill in the gap).
   

9. False foliage: That palm tree you pass by every day may just be concealing a wireless tower. Larson Camouflage, in Tucson, Arizona, fabricates realistic-looking trees, cacti, boulders and the like for wireless carriers.
   
10. Remote access: Metal keys will obsolesce as wireless identification for authorized entry into cars, houses, buildings, public transit and events proliferates, eventually necessitating the creation of a single key/ID/debit device, smart card or subcutaneous RFID.

5 Technology Trends
From faster, fuller protocols to a fragmented spectrum, the air waves are supercharged with change.

[click for larger image] Bitstream’s ThunderHawk browser puts the company’s font expertise to good use.

1. Java Specification Request 185: Java Technology for the Wireless Industry adds to MIDP 2.0’s advanced networking, security, gaming and media features with Wireless Messaging API 1.1 and MMAPI 1.1. The goal? To provide a single application environment and stop the proliferation of vendor-specific APIs. Features include enforcing a standard application size of up to 64KB, up to 30KB of persistent storage and 256KB of memory. It recommends a screen size of 125x125 pixels with 12 bits of color depth. Supported images are JPEGs and PNGs, and all media content must be accessible via HTTP 1.1. Finally, JSR 185 requires a device to alert users to the presence of risky, untrusted code and the possibility of incurring a bill.
   
2. Smart devices: While the WAP/WML browser approach leaves the intelligence on the server, the smart-client application paradigm—common to both Java 2 Mobile Edition and .NET Compact Edition—offers richer UIs, personalization, offline or asynchronous capability and caching for improved performance. On the other hand, it’s a greater challenge to program an application on a smart device than, say, use ASP.NET Mobile Controls to present the user interface via a browser, which makes sense when the goal is to reach a wide audience and take advantage of relatively unlimited server resources.
   
3. Spectrum politics: Getting existing spectrum holders to move out of parts of the UHF band to make room for digital TV and other uses isn’t easy. In a recent report to Congress, the FCC explained that buyers are reluctant to bid on spectrum that may not currently be vacant and is surrounded by uncertainty, what with digital TV sets tentatively set to enter the market in 2007 on luxury consoles only. But where there’s government, there’s money, so the Bush administration announced in June its plan to “create a Spectrum Relocation Fund to streamline the process for reimbursing government users, facilitate their relocation and provide greater certainty to auction bidders and incumbents.” The administration has also earmarked new spectrum for third-generation wireless services and made available additional spectrum at 5GHz for WiFi.
   
4. WiMAX, or 802.16a: In a year or two, a wireless standard optimized for fixed and later mobile broadband operation should come into play. Advances include quality of service, enhanced security, higher data rates, and mesh and smart antenna technology. Though it could be a path to fourth-generation wireless data exchange, WiMAX is primarily being pushed for outdoor and private networks, hot spots and remedying line-of-sight problems.
   
5. Low batteries: “Moore’s Law does not apply to battery life: So far, no exponential expansion of battery capacity with the passage of years has been observed,” notes a May 2003 Sun white paper, “The CLDC HotSpot Implementation Virtual Machine.” Whether it’s keeping the Java virtual machine inside the on-processor cache or tuning to specific devices and minimizing application libraries, software must run elegantly and economically to avoid premature battery drain and even excessive heat generation.
   

1 Life-Saving Killer App
Preventing car and gun accidents is within reach of today’s wireless technology.

1. In our safety-obsessed, litigious society, it seems that even the most innocuous outdoor activity now requires a helmet. Ironically, while such low-tech protection is ubiquitous, smart cars and guns would save millions more lives, yet only one of them is likely to be released anytime soon. DaimlerChrysler R&D is working on pedestrian recognition systems that could potentially avoid accidents, and vehicular collision prevention systems have been proposed. But lobbyists have blocked similar technology—sensors, embedded microprocessors or wireless data exchange—to prevent firearm deaths by unauthorized users and children.