iConverged

(July 13: sorry for the downtime, looks like my bandwidth limits were exceeded. Upgraded my hosting package – fixed)

(note: Only the call part is Vanilla SIP. The procedure for registering a Facetime user into their servers etc. is all non-SIP, encrypted/ciphered.)

(for my user review of the iphone4 and bumper read here)

Well heck, good job Apple! I just tested facetime and did a quick check on its protocol. No hacking needed – just an on the wire black box inspection – its just plain SIP and STUN for firewall discovery. Apple plans to make this protocol public, and they seem to have done an excellent job. And thanks for showing the world that you don’t need complicated encryption and proprietary tunneling tricks for an excellent experience. You need a good codec set, a good media stack that can adaptively switch codecs and manage buffers  and a good ‘point-of-presence’ network for the most part.

I am just going to restrict this post to an overview of the flow.

Enjoy:

click on each image for a larger size (if they are small)

This is a facetime all flow – good, plain, SIP (they use MESSAGE for some proprietary data exchange during the call)

rest is perfect sip.

The protocols are here to see (besides SIP)

Ah here is their 200OK for INVITE

A quick look at their RTP stream:

Good Job Apple. Thanks for putting in an excellent quality, standards compliant SIP client embedded into your dialer experience.

(Updated Jun 30 with iphone 4 bumper strip review)

I was one of the 600,000 people who managed to get in their iphone 4 orders on day one, before all the servers collapsed.

So anyway, I got my iphone 4 yesterday (Fedex dropped it in at around 11:30 in the morning). Here is my brief review so far:

(These are just my observations as a user. For a more indepth review, read Engadet’s iphone 4 review. )

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I finally get why people tweet. It lets you speak your mind the way it is, without requiring you to make a paragraph out of it. When I blog, I think, then form, then rehearse then post. When I tweet, I think and tweet. The link between my thoughts and the tweets is more direct. And of course, very often, I don’t have paragraphs to talk about, but still experience exciting new things that can be written in 3 lines. So now I understand the subtle difference of tweeting vs blogging. I’ve wiped the dust off my twitter account. I will use that more often now. I will still occasionally post, but only if I have lots to say.

Follow on at http://twitter.com/arjunrc

After 4 years of serious Blackberry 8700 and 8800 use, my wife convinced me to switch to the sexier iphone. I was pretty wary knowing it is not very good for business usage. However, my wife’s prime interest was to get me off the keypad while driving. To her dismay, I am now an expert fast typist on my iphone virtual keyboard – but I do listen to her and for my own safety don’t thumb responses to email while stopping at a light. Here are my experiences (so far) on what I did to bring my iphone closer to my needs. I have the iphone 32G 3GS. My previous phone was the wonderful, but, well not oomphy BB 8800.

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There has been a lot of posts and flutter on Google’s new purported Chrome OS and how it will be a great battle with Microsoft, how it will confuse and/or kill Android etc. And also, of course, taking off from the Google Blog on Chrome OS “For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies” people are also throwing in “Web OS” everywhere.

I thought I’d write a post detailing my thoughts (technical) on this entire issue.

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I’ve always believed the concept of location is important to an application, but it does not really define an application. Continuing that line of thought, I think many companies who join the ‘LBS is a killer Application’ idealogy have it completely wrong.

Location is NOT going to be successful as an Application. It is going to be super successful as a tool. Let me justify my stand.

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So the rumors of many years ago were true. Google finally did release a browser. Naturally, I downloaded it and took it for a test drive. Here is the short of it.

Version reviewed:

Google may be rolling out updates regularly (For example, I suddenly see evident popup blocking), so to put it in context, this is the version I am reviewing

Installation:

The installer is just around 470K to download, but of course that is the ‘pre-installer’. Once you grab the pre-installer, it downloads the rest of the browser from the net. As of now, in its first release, focus seems to be on super simplicity. It does not even ask you where to install it. I am OK with that, but it really does choose a weird location to install it (in Documents and Settings!)

(click on any image to see a full size version)

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Image credit

Yahoo recently launched Fire-Eagle, which is essentially an ‘open platform’ that allows two simple things:

A) Users can update the system whenever they want with their location

B) Application Developers can access the system whenever they want to know the location of consumers and do anything with it (i.e. serve any application that can make use of that information)

Of course, ‘Users’ can explictly set permissions on who can or cannot view their location.

For a long time, I have wanted to see such an open and simple platform, where ‘executing a service based on location’ is completely independent of ‘the technology used to provide the location’. Because I believe providing individually accessible repositories of data is the key construct to building a hierarchy of innovative products. You collect data, expose it to others so they can transform your data into information. And your information, is data for the next application. So turns the wheel of the Web 2.0 circle. And a location repository is one key missing element to personalize services.

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If you are in this emerging ‘applications’ market, and are in the business of building applications for OEMs/ISVs or Service Providers (yes, some Operators actively invest in R&D work), the term ‘Rapid Prototype’ is not new to you. In short, people are always looking at ‘quick and dirty’ demonstration code that shows off a cool concept which they can take to prospective customers as a viable product or service to be rolled out. Customers who ask for this are not sure if that idea will go anywhere, but are willing to test the waters with you (if you are willing). A typical software development organization follows the ‘Build Rome one stone at a time’ model whereas this particular market needs the ‘pre-fab modular home in 1 month’ model and therefore struggles with this particular market. I know of many organizations who  believe this is not an area to be in, because of the limited scope and length of such projects. The problem however, is that they fail to understand that this market is actually very attractive and profitable, but only if you look at it the right way, and approach it the right way. Last week, I was chatting up with a friend on the same issue and was sharing some insights into what one should try and institute to make this model work. He suggested a blog post, so here goes – some common problems, pitfalls and solutions:

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I had the opportunity to do a sneak preview of Microsoft’s popfly mashup platform a few months ago. Based on the quick look, at that point of time, it was just a prettier looking  version of Yahoo! Pipes. However, another peek a few months later and I am much more impressed. I must admit that till now, of all the mashup editors I have evaluated, Google Mashup Editor has been my favorite. And that was because I truly feel powerful mashups which are globally useful will be written by developers, not my grandmom, so the interface need to provide more powers and not just pretty ‘connectors’.

I must admit, Popfly on second look has good potential.

So here is my quick analysis of why I think it is like Pipes, like GME, like Facebook and somewhat different. In other words, I think Microsoft has been watching how the others do it, and picked some good features from all, along with some very irritating ones.

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