Meet me at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona!

This weekend I will travel to Barcelona to attend the Mobile World Congress, the year's most important trade fair in the wireless industry. I work there as a reporter for Areamobile and member of the Nokia Blogger Relations program.

The schedule is quite packed with interviews to Qik, Nokia, United Mobile and many other companies. Most interested I am in new devices.

However I realize that many of my readers and fellow bloggers will go to Barcelona too. It would be great to meet you face to face. So please drop me a line to set up a meeting!

How to edit Thunderbird's e-mail preferences on the small screen of the Asus EEE PC

Yesterday I checked out the EEE PC from Asus and I like it very much. It comes for €299 in Germany, is super handy and makes no noise when you use it. So it's perfect for checking e-mails or reading websites while in fact you have to other things, like listen to your professor or something like that.

The EEE PC is a very unobtrusive device, but it also has its odd qualities: The screen is often too small for configuration purposes on the built in Xandros Linux. In many cases you cannot reach the OK button at the end of a configuration window and often configuration options are left outside the usable screen.

That almost drove me crazy when I configured the Thunderbird e-mail program. The "Leave Mail on Server" option was unreachable outside the screen and there is no possibility to change the default resolution on the Asus EEE PC. Since the EEE PC has only few Gigabyte of storage it's not exactly the device where you want to download all your e-mails.

But fortunately I found a workaround: Thunderbird can be configured by editing the about:config page. That's a powerful feature of Mozilla applications which lists application settings (known as preferences) that are read from the profile files prefs.js and user.js, and from application defaults. Many of these preferences are not present in the Options or Preferences dialog. Using about:config is one of several methods of modifying preferences and adding other "hidden" ones. In Thunderbird 1.5 or later, about:config is accessed via "Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> General -> Config Editor (button)".

In about:config this option has to be set on true:

mail.server.default.leave_on_server = TRUE

And if you want to save space on the flash drive, it's recommendable to empty the trash bin every time you close the Thunderbird e-mail program:

mail.server.defaul.empty_trash_on_exit = TRUE

That's all. Have fun with the Asus EEE PC! It's the perfect mobile device for quickly answering e-mails, because it has a full QWERTY keyboard and boots up in 30 seconds.

AVM has started to sell one of the coolest VoIP devices ever

The company AVM from Berlin has started to sell one of the coolest VoIP devices ever, the FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270, but only in Germany. Fritz!Box devices are still lacking FCC approval and carry only the seal of Europe's counterpart, Communauté Européenne (CE). That's why people from many other countries cannot enjoy them. In my opinion they blow away all other VoIP devices from Linksys, Grandstream or Sipura. At least you can start to dream by reading the first press release from March 15, 2007.


FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270
Premiere for the New FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 – Combines ADSL, VDSL, WLAN 11n, DECT and Media Streaming for More DSL, More VoIP and More Multimedia

• New top-of-the-range FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270


• Integrated DECT base station; ADSL, ADSL 2+ and VDSL broadband


• More WLAN with 802.11n and MIMO technology


• Media streaming server for all music files a the USB port


• HD voice with 16 kHz broadband speech codec

The FRITZ!Box family will be premiering its new flagship, FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270, at this year’s Cebit. Thanks to its wide range of features the new FRITZ!Box is now more than ever your central data hub for home Internet access. The new FRITZ!Box enables a previously unknown wide range of options: broadband access via ADSL, ADSL2+ and VDSL, and operation of cordless telephones using DECT. The new IEEE 802.11n (Draft 2.0) wireless standard, also in use for the first time, offers optimum transmission of data, speech and HD video in combination with MIMO multiple antenna technology. The integrated media server lets you listen to music in your entire network even when your PC is switched off.

ADSL and VDSL broadband

The new FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 shares the award-winning details of the current FRITZ!Box line and is also incredibly easy to use. Using ADSL (6 Mbit/s), ADSL2+ (16 bit/s) and VDSL (50 Mbit/s) technologies, the new FRITZ!Box is ready for the future expansion of broadband connections. It supports permanent virtual connections (ATM PVC) for ADSL 2+ and virtual local networks (VLAN) for VDSL. This enables different quality of service classes for various services such as voice, video and Internet. FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 supports Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) for Internet streaming. IGMP is the standard for IP multicasting on the Internet, i.e. the sending of an IP data stream to several recipients simultaneously.

New WLAN features: 802.11n and eco mode

For the first time, FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 enables WLAN connections using the future IEEE 802.11n wireless standard, which is ideal for simultaneous transmission of data, voice and multimedia. AVM uses the recently unveiled Draft 2.0 of 11n, which also defines compatibility. MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) multiple antenna technology has increased WLAN quality and data transfer rates considerably. Wireless connections can also be established using 802.11g. FRITZ!Box is secure on delivery thanks to activated WPA encryption; WPA2 can be activated individually as required. WMM (Wi-Fi multimedia) ensures optimum wireless transmission of voice, data and multimedia and simultaneous transmission of multiple streaming applications. WLAN can be switched off using sleep mode or a switch. WLAN eco mode also lets you reduce power output considerably even when the device is in use. Thanks to eco mode, AVM already complies with the planned EU Code of Conduct on improving energy efficiency.

Integrated DECT – new sound with HD voice – VoIP encryption

FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 makes placing calls over the Internet or your landline (analog and ISDN) easy and convenient. TAE sockets let you use existing telephones without the adapters required by other products. Cordless calls are also possible thanks to the new integrated DECT base station, which supports up to six mobile components. The new FRITZ!Box is compatible with the first phase of the new DECT cordless standard (CAT-iq), which offers better voice quality thanks to more bandwidth. The internal ISDN S0 connection lets you use up to 8 ISDN phones and PBXs to access VoIP and your landline. Integrated bandwidth management (quality of service) enables parallel applications such as VoIP and HD video streaming. FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 delivers with HD voice (High Definition) a brand-new sound quality for Internet telephony. It supports the Linear PCM 16 and PCMA 16 voice transmission standards with a 16-kHz sampling rate. RFC 3551 defines the application of these standards for Voice over IP (VoIP), enabling top voice quality in phone calls. Calls over the Internet can be encrypted as needed. AVM uses two internationally standardized protocols, TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SRTP (Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol) for this purpose. Using important familiar features from ISDN, such as toggling, call waiting, call divert and three-way conference calls, is intuitive with AVM’s new FRITZ! product whether for Internet or landline calls.

More options – music server and new USB interface

The FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 USB 2.0 port enables new network applications, and the integrated music server lets you listen to music in your entire network even when your PC is off. Hard drives connected to FRITZ!Box can be operated in Windows as conveniently as a local hard drive. You can even have secure access remotely using FTP. Thanks to AVM USB Remote Architecture (AURA), all devices connected to FRITZ!Box behave as if they were connected directly to your PC.

Comprehensive features for more security and convenience

The new FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 features comprehensive software, including a telephone book, alarm clock, firewall, child lock, WLAN sleep mode and eco mode for reducing energy consumption. One button lets you pair handheld devices (DECT and WLAN), while another lets you switch WLAN on and off.

Free calls VoIP widgets make me get funny phone calls

Since my last post "Call me for free with Tringme!" I get funny calls from Senegal and other far away countries. They go through Tringme, but also my click to call widgets from Voxalot and Sitòfono. Somebody must have spread the word that I give support on certain VoIP services and devices. No wonder that people call me, since it's for free.

I am OK with such calls, but please understand that I can only answer during working hours in my time zone. The rest of the calls goes to the voice mail box. The yesterday's caller didn't even understand that he was talking to an answering machine. He thought that I was on the phone with him but refusing to answer, so he got a little upset. Also I had serious problems to understand his Englisch and the e-mail address he left.

I think for such purposes it's still the best option to contact me over the contact form on my website. The last caller who came through caught me on my cell phone in a department store when I couldn't help him at all.

I think Google's Mobile Phone Platform Android will be great

So the Google Phone is out and the first reactions are not too good. At least at GigaOM there is more criticism than kudos. Nobody wants to hype the new product, nearly everyone is nagging. Since Google's shares are worth more than 700 dollars it's not cool anymore to be a Google fanboy.

I got an invitation to the same press call like Om, but unfortunately it started when my workday ended. May other journalist cover the story. Also it seems that the press call was not very much of a pleasure. "They completely dodged my question about how does it reconcile with other mobile linux efforts which are backed by none other than partners like Motorola", writes Om Malik.

Personally I like very much what he tells about Android, Google's new mobile phone plattform:

What is Android? A fully integrated mobile “software stack” that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. It will be made available under one of the most progressive, developer-friendly open-source licenses, which gives mobile operators and device manufacturers significant freedom and flexibility to design products. Next week, the Alliance will release an early access software development kit to provide developers with the tools necessary to create innovative and compelling applications for the platform.

Does anybody know if this has something to do with OpenMOKO, the other open Linux cell phone platform? Maybe Android is just the same?

How open is Android compared to OpenMOKO?

The latter let's you manipulate everything to the very core of the mobile phone functions. Yet now there are thousands of great free Linux programs running on the OpenMOKO devices. I would love to see this kind of openness backed by heavy weights like Google and the other mentioned companies.

I hope that Android is as open as the Open Handset Alliance's website says:

Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It is built to be truly open. For example, an application could call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that has been designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications.

All applications are created equal

Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos.

I think GigaOM's reader rohit understands it right:

i think this is a much bigger potential play at replacing the whole mobile phone software stack and aimed at making it truly an information appliance. think of it as an IP-services led “phone” design, not a telco-call based device.

It's a Linux for phones! You can do everything with it, if it's really open. I already wonder how it cooperates with Google's Ubiquisys femtocells. It annoys very much that my cell phone is not as open and flexible as my PC. Give me a command line to my cell phone and I will be happy!

Or, as commentator David Jacobs puts it:

Being an open system, hackers will have a field day with this and it could get some serious traction among the geek community who are so frustrated with the iPhone limitations.

Here you can get more quotes from Android's developers:

"Even A teenager in the basement and a senior designer in a big company - they have the same chance", says the film. That would be great because I don’t want just a Google Phone. I want many different of them for different purposes. That’s why I think the OS approach is great. The iPhone just isn’t enough anymore. It’s so 2007.

I got the offer to do interviews to John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer of Google's hardware producer HTC, and Florian Seiche, Vice President Europe of HTC, tomorrow. Let's see if that will answer my open questions.

Jajah offers pure play VoIP over 3G, inconsistent with their No Headset campaign

The web based callback operator Jajah starts to offer real VoIP calls over a 3G HSDPA cell phone network in Japan. That's funny since it undermines their own "Smash your headset" campaign which Jajah uses to attack competitor Skype. But Jajah's press department again did a great job of reality distortion so that bloggers and old school media didn't realize the the contradiction. I already covered the topic for the German news website Areamobile where I now work more often.

Normally people have to pay double at Jajah. After they enter their own number and the callee's number on a web site or in a mobile phone, Jajah's server establishes two phone calls to connect them. That's not always the cheapest option, compared to calling cards or pure play VoIP, and has nearly nothing to do with mobile internet telephony. Jajah uses VoIP only in the backend to connect the calls. The callers just need a normal PSTN or cell phone to start a Jajah conversation. But now Jajah starts to change these rules with a new operation in Japan. The per minute price gets cheaper by eliminating the double calls and Jajah does more or less the same like Truphone.

The Japanese company Emobile will be the first mobile operator in this country to offer VoIP over HSDPA. The start is scheduled for October 18, 2007, and the application has been developed by Jajah for the "One Alpha" devices of Emobile, which until now were data only and could not make phone calls. The phone calls go over the Jajah network and cost per minute about 9.7 Euro cents to Japanese cell phones and 1.4 Euro cents to the PSTN. Emobile makes its money by charging a flatrate tariff for the VoIP and other data usage. Emergency calls or calls to free numbers are not possible, as we already know it from other VoIP providers. The VoIP application comes preinstalled on new devices, or can be installed on existing devices, and the customer only needs to sign up with Jajah, which gets him a 300 Yen (1.80 Euro cents) call credit.

I would really like to know more about this application, but the information is spare. Jajah did not send out an own press release and their public relations people don't know more either, I learned from emails and phone calls. The big question is how the new Jajah VoIP application looks from inside and if it's the first outcome of the recent investment by Intel. Jajah's co-founder, Roman Scharf, said in May 2007 on this occasion: "The deeper Jajah can be embedded into Intel solutions, the better for customers everywhere. It is our intention to bring a best-of-class, next generation solution to the market which can be embedded and optimized for any computing device." Fellow blogger Moshe Maeir then explained in his blog posts "Jajah gets $20m and Intel’s patents" and "Behind the scenes of the Intel, Jajah deal" how Jajah's access to Intel's patent portfolio helps to embed Jajah's telephony functions at the chip level of mobile phones.

Maybe that's what's happening now with Emobile? The birth of a new mobile VoIP hardware?

The funny part is that you have to connect a HEADSET to the "One Alpha" device from Emobile, which runs Windows Mobile 6.0, to make a Jajah call. That's so ironic since Jajah is badgering their opponent Skype yet for months with a campaign under the claim "If you liked Skype, You'll love Jajah". It makes fun of the fact that Skype users are tied to their PC and have to use a headset to make a call. "Jajah is revolutionary because it lets you make free and low-cost global calls using your everyday mobile or landline phone," said Roman Scharf in the regarding press release. "Services like Skype require headsets, software downloads and sometimes other technical equipment, making them way too hard for the everyday consumer to use."

With the new VoIP service from Emobile Jajah works exactly the same way. But at least nobody has to pay double for a phone call.

Can the new iPod touch download podcasts over Wifi?

Does anybody know whether you can download podcasts wirelessly from iTunes to the new iPod touch?

I cannot find an answer to that.

I guess this new wireless device could fulfil all my musical needs. But Steve Jobs shouldn't think that I would buy music over Wifi from his iTunes store! That's a new feature of the iPod touch which has been celebrated in all the news.

But the best iTunes feature are the free podcasts, like Dance Department, winner of the category Best Podcast at the 2007 Miami Winter Music Conference. Every week another world famous DJ is on the decks, no annoying advertising or cheap talk. Just one interesting interview, the best dance tracks of the week and a 30 minutes high class DJ set plus one "educating classic".

But I am fed up with downloading podcasts to the laptop and syncing to the iPod. I would like to download them directly over Wifi and delete them when the memory is full.

This leads me to the next question: Does the new iPod generation finally have a delete button?

Interesting interview with OpenMoko

PC World has a very interesting text and interview with the makers of OpenMoko, the open source "anti iPhone". Most interesting: After GPRS, built-in GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth they will add 3G next year.

We plan on going 3G next year. This first device uses existing Gerber designs from our feature phones to lower the costs. Remember that this is an unlocked, nonsubsidized phone. So $300 is actually incredibly cheap. We thought this was super-important, to help with early adoption.

There is a nice list of yet available applications, but there is more to come since the entire open source world is invited to develop and to port their applications.

Crippling the Nokia N95 might be the right move

The Truphone blog tells that some UK clients of the company reported a strange behaviour of their brand new Nokia N95. The devices they've bought under contract from their carriers appear to have internet telephony disabled. This means they cannot use Truphone as they'd hoped.

Too bad, but understandable as VoIP experts Jeff Pulver and Andy Abramson comment. Especially Jeff puts himself very much in the shoes of the mobile carriers:

Given the reality of how much money Nokia makes on an annual basis from companies like Orange UK and Vodaphone UK, if I worked at Nokia and had the sales responsibility for say the Vodaphone account, I would do whatever my customer asked of me to keep and protect their business.

It's strange to see how the VoIP community criticizes and approves the crippling of the N95 at the same. I feel so schizophrenic too. As a hard core VoIP user I refuse to block VoIP on mobile phones. But as a rational person I understand that the mobile carriers have to be afraid of it. I am the best example.

I just love to use Wifi telephony on my new Nokia E61. I use three different SIP telephony providers at the same time. Two of them ring on my mobile phone and my desk phone at the same time when a call enters. Only Truphone doesn’t do this because it works only on mobile phones.

It’s really easy to enter the data for the SIP connection into the E61. In fact I use about 20 different SIP providers on my mobile phone: Pulver, Gizmo, Iptel.org, Ekiga.net and the like are all tied to my Voxalot account. I wrote about this before.

Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments:
Why I use about 20 different VoIP providers

You can dial 20 different numbers or SIP addresses and they all ring on my mobile phone. Great!

I even tried VoIP on GPRS because I have really cheap data prices. It works, only the delay is horrible. But if my carrier provided 3G I would surely use it for VoIP. With HSDPA and VoIP the sound would be crystal clear. Look at cities like London! They will have spotless Wifi coverage soon. No need for using the mobile carrier anymore. Instead my prefered no frills VoiP operator gives me unlimited calls to 40 countries for the price of about 4 dollars a month. This includes my own country, what's of course the most important.

"Free calls" like in "free beer" are the VoIP killer app to me. When I see my low costs for calls from my mobile and my desk phone I understand the suffering of the incumbents and the mobile carriers.

But maybe that's just the payback for the former years' rip off.

CeBIT 2007 is better than expected

Many critics had said that CeBIT is out of date and that it had lost ground to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, which have been held some weeks before. But Hanover's CeBIT is still the world's largest computer expo. After half of the time CeBIT has ten per cent more visitors than last year and to me it was more interesting to me than ever. Maybe because of the technological promises that at last have been accomplished after years of cheap talk.

It started with Vodafone's and T-Mobile's presentation of Europe's fastest 3G internet access for laptops and mobile phones: The new network combines High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access Technology (HSUPA). So it can deliver download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbits/s and uploads of up to 1.45 Mbits/s. That's faster than most classic DSL rates. I was impressed to see a 100 Megabyte FTP download to a laptop taking only 2:45 minutes. „The new HSDPA is at least seven times faster than every 3G internet access you get in the US“, said Vodafone spokesman Jens Kürten to me. „We will roll it out in Germany in the next months.“ Vodafone's 3G network covers already over 2,000 cities in Germany with data transmission rates of up to 1.8 Mbits/s. Faster transmission rates of up to 3.6 MBits/s are available in all major cities and 7.2 Mbit/s will follow soon.

But while Kürten sees it more as a replacement for fixed line internet access and Wifi hotspots on laptops Samsung presented already a tiny mobile phone which really can make use of such amazing speeds. The F700 looks from outside very similar to Apple's iPhone and has the size of a normal cell phone. But when you slide it open there is an entire keyboard for writing e-mails and chat messages. Unfortunately the interest in the phone was so big at CeBIT that the F700 had to be held behind glass and I could not check out the download speeds. Hopefully with devices like this the mobile network operators keep in mind what Germany's head of state, chancellor Angela Merkel, told them in their CeBIT opening speach: to bring down their prices. „You get more clients when you make it cheaper“, she said to more than 2000 IT managers. Many cell phone companies still charge more than 9 Euro per Megabyte and wonder why the mobile internet usage isn't higher among their clients.

With HSDPA these prices are just a joke and new Notebooks like Toshiba's „Portégé R400“ already come to the shelfs with built in 3G internet access and bundled with T-Mobile or Vodafone contract. The R400 downloads e-mails and synchronyzes the calendar continuously, even when it's closed or in standby mode. A second display outside the cover keeps you informed about new incoming messages, whithout the need to open the notebook. Although the luxury notebooks weighs only 3.79-pounds it can be already too heavy for today's miniaturization freaks. So Samsung's revealed on CeBIT it's Q1B, the world's lightest Universal Mobile PC (UPMC) which weighs just 1.67 poundsand runs Windows Vista. With 60 Gigabyte Harddisc, 1,0 Ghz Pentium processor and 7 Inch display the Q1B will is in the US stores from now on for 1299 dollars.

But maybe the times of personal computers are now really over and everything switches to the web. At least this idea came to my mind when the German software company Magix presented their online desktop Mygoya that's still in closed beta. The Flash website fullfils all basic needs of a computer user: E-mails, photo collection with optimization, all known messenger services with voice, videos, music, filesharing and office programs are managed in one Mygoya account. The files are saved for free on the 1 GB storage space and can be accessed from every computer or mobile phone with a Flash player. No need for an own harddisc anymore, because there will be more storage space in the paid version. No operating system wars anymore, because flash runs on virtually everyone.

„Soon the Mygoya desktop will also run Skype“, said Magix promotion manager Janek Bennewitz to me. I wonder how they want to do this since Skype is a closed system. But maybe these days are also over: At least the Italian company PCService presented a great way to bridge Skype and normal phones. Their Linux software Skip2PBX serves as an addition to a company's existing PBX. Installed on a Linux machine, which can also be virtual, it controls up to 30 Skype accounts at one time, using different sessions of the Skype program. When a Skype call arrives it's being redirected to a phone. The Users can call their Skype contacts for free by using short numbers on their phone. While the software still works only with ISDN and analogue phone lines the next version, which is due in june, will build the bridge from Skype to SIP.

A nice addition to existing company PBXs and a great example of the new VoIP ideas presented in Hall 13. The companies there showed how they want to beat the incumbents by channeling more and more calls over the internet. This isn't always automatically the cheapest, we learn from recent news about real „minute stealers“ that take away phone minutes by hacking a company's VoIP gateway. „That's possible because you can configure most PBXs with just few clicks in your browser“, explains Jens-Uwe Junghanns, sales manager of the German PBX producer Junghanns.NET Gmbh. „The built in webserver of the PBX can be an open door for hackers.“ So their poison green „Cruise phone“ PBX for VoIP and PSTN telephony can be configured only from one computer which has the right Java applet installed. German security at it's best that nearly got overlooked at CeBIT in Hanover.

GigaOM needs more stories from Europe, especially Germany

GigaOM, my favourite weblog on new technologies, wants to develop further and asks it's readers:

Folks, I am looking to do deeper technology stories, and cover more “technology” focused start-ups. Any thoughts on categories, topics, company names etc, please leave your comments.

Well, here I am and directly answered with this message:


Hello Om,

I wouldn't like to see stories on biotech, nanotech or greentech here. I come for the electronics, because that is what most interests me as a reader. Also I worked in former days in a magazine which tried to do the splits between electronics and bio. It did not work well because both parts came too short.

What GigaOM is definitely lacking is a more international focus. You are very concentrated on the US and often missing bleeding edge technologies from other parts of the world. I see it especially in the VoIP area, where GigaOM sometimes presents new technologies that make me say "but that's no big deal". I could do most of this already at home, using my Fritz!Box from the German company AVM. So GigaOM should maybe cover more European companies.

I see for instance these stories from Germany I would have liked to read on GigaOM:

1.) Siemens (from Munich) will present on CeBIT their new product HiPath MobileConnect, that let's mobile phones do a seamless handover between Wifi telephony and GSM networks - and back, always choosing the cheapest way to connect, without interrupting the call.

2.) Cellity (from Hamburg) tunnels mobile calls with exquisite voice quality trough fixed lines, bringing down the prices up to 90 per cent.

3.) AVM's new Fritz!Box Fon WLAN 7270 (from Berlin ) is the dream device for VoIP: DECT phone for fixed line phone calls and VoIP, WLAN router, answering machine, USB host, DSL modem and music streamer in just one device. It also works with the new V-DSL for downloads speeds until 100 MBit and includes the new 802.11n standard for super fast Wifi. Any other American product seems more than oldfashioned against this! Also you have to keep in mind that people in Germany get these devices for free from their DSL providers. That's the reason why there are already millions of VoIP users in Germany.

4.) "Most of the Nokia phones will have Wifi soon. For instance in the N-Series Wifi is no exception but a general feature", said Ari Virtanen, Vice President Convergence Products, Multimedia of Nokia two weeks ago in an interview with me. How will this affect the mobile network providers like Vodafone if their clients can now avoid their expensive networks with devices they get for 1 Euro? (Because also the Wifi phones are subsidized in Germany.)

5.) How come that much of the technology of the new OpenMOKO dream device, an all open Linux phone, comes from a Linux / VoIP community project in Germany (Berlin)? What did they have to suffer until they found their device maker from Taiwan and GigaOM covered it two days ago?

These are stories that are very interesting to me. And there is much more to cover, that maybe slips trough your fingers because it is not always announced in English press releases that arrive on your desk. If you want I could be helpful as a correspondent. Just click on my website for more information!

Best regards,
Markus Göbel

The iPod needs a DELETE Button!

I like my 5th generation iPod very much. It let's me listen to music and news and it shows videos. I still don't have it too long and so I am still very enthusiastic. This makes me subscribe to many podcasts. I love it to be independent from time schemes they have in radio and television. I can listen to the music I like and see the tv program I want when I have time to do it. That's podcasting, but only when it works well.

But there is a problem:

Until you find the podcasts that you really like, you have to subscribe to many of them and to suffer from very bad ones. This experience doesn't count only for audio podcasts. Even video podcasts can be quite boring although they are obviously made by professionals.

So I am always carrying around 30 GB of podcasts on my iPod and try to get track of them. What is so stupid about Apple's iPod is that is has no delete button. If I don't like the podcast that I am hearing while driving in public transport I would like delete it directly from the iPod. Having come home I would have enough free space to download new podcasts on my mobile device. My problem is that I already have more than 30 GB of podcasts stored on my laptop. So I always have to decide which one I want to keep on my iPod.

This is so annyoing: I have to connect the iPod to iTunes and see it's list of content. Than I have to remember which podcast I didn't like and which one I wanted to keep. I have to remember which one I have already heared and which not. This is because iTunes and the iPod do not synchronize this. My iTunes doesn't care which podcast I already listened to on the iPod.

One workaround or a hack for this problem could be the "rate your songs" feature. Normally you can awarding from one to five stars to the songs that you are hearing on your iPod while listenig to them. I could use this feature the other way round: Songs or podcasts with five stars are so bad that they have to be deleted the next time I connect to iTunes.

But the "rate your songs" feature doesn't work on my iPod. It works fine on my friend Christian's iPod nano, but not on mine. We both don't understand why and already tried it several times.

Hello Apple! It's time for a firmware update.

First Blog post

Hello folks,

today I start my tech blog. I know I am not the first. But I realized in the last days that I have opinions to many devices that are not well reflected in the other media. I read other blogs, websites and newsletters, but sometimes I want to answer. So the last times I wrote comments in the blogs of Om Malik and Andy Abramson. That's enough. Now I am going to start my own blog and whenever I have an opinion I am going to write it down there. It will still probably be comments on other people's thoughts and still appear in their comments section. But now as a trackback to my own blog entries.

I first called the blog "Tech desiderata" because I see that there are still many things which have to get better in nowadays technology. Many stuff bores me, annoys me or just does not work. I will tell my readers about it and hopefully won't be boring myself. But the name is now "Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments".