I already wrote about the extreme lack of support for most of Bluetooth’s possibilities in the original iPhone, but it seems Apple has improved things a bit with the release of the iPhone 3G.

Looking over the PICS again, the Phonebook Server Equipment (PSE) mode in the Phonebook Access Profile (PBAP) is now supported, which means that phonebook download, browsing and other functions are available, but not contact uploads, which would require a Phonebook Client Equipment role in the profile. A very clear and simple explanation of PBAP can be found on Microsoft’s MSDN Library.

All this mumbo-jumbo means that carkits such as the Parrot MINIKIT SLIM can download and use the iPhone’s contact list for training-free speech recognition and dialing, which is very cool and works wonders! For those interested, PSE makes support for vCard 2.1 and 3.0 mandatory.

Additionally, Hands-Free Profile 1.5 is also supported on top of the much more limited Headset profile in the original iPhone. They still don’t support inband ringtones, for reasons that escape me, as it’s not like you can steal the ringtones in hi-def over speech-quality Bluetooth. In any case, a good step in the right direction!

There are plenty of articles abound, from those who are critic and dismount Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, and even those who still believe there is something there. Hard economic facts have basically proven the theory wrong. The analysis so far doesn’t address the ‘why’, only the blinding truth of the real numbers – in my view, the problem is a universal lack of time.

Essentially, even though in the ‘Tail’ there may live hundreds of thousands or even millions of undiscovered songs (to take a practical example), it’s literally impossible that a human could listen to them all and make purchases based on the discoveries. Even if you categorize music in ‘country’ or ‘rock & roll’ groups, there is still a vast selection that you could never hope to listen to in its entirety. Another practical example: you would need seven solid days of non-stop listening to hear through an 8GB iPod’s memory (2000 songs), so how can you hope to listen through a catalog as huge as any of the online music stores? What happens is most people stay with the ‘most popular’, or ‘new releases’ categories, which are usually influenced by the market in order to push known artists or commercial hits to the top. It’s very unlikely that some kid from some unknown town in Idaho would make it to the ‘new releases’ section of iTunes.

Finally, I recommend reading the Long Tail with Tom Slee’s critical reader’s companion.

Still running on June’s 3.0 release – and boy, am I glad I didn’t upgrade to 4.0, mainly due to lack of time. In hindsight, it seems that there are so many problems with Parallels 4.0 that I’m going to try VMWare Fusion instead. The world looks slowly more perpendicular…

It seems weird, and I really don’t want to put everyone in the same bag, as I’ve had the pleasure to work with some really excellent and cool people from Germany, so I’m really curious as to why ALL (seriously, it really is all of them!) trolls who simply post stupid, senseless and made-to-piss-off comments on my posts come from there. There has also been some trouble in other places with regard to commenters or even admins that are from Germany. What is it with these people? Move to Spain, eat some paella and drink some sangria, I think you really need it! Feel free to troll this post too, I’ll be happy to delete your comments after having a good laugh.

It’s curious that over the last few weeks, and possibly due to the crisis mass-hysteria, the few LinkedIn groups I am a member of have turned into job posting boards, mainly for people looking for work, with headlines such as:

Are you looking for an experienced Content , Business Development or Product Manager ? Look no further.

What this is doing as a thread topic in a wireless-related discussion group escapes me, but I see it more and more in the daily email digest. There isn’t anything wrong with this per se, other than swaying the forums/groups off-topic.

…you may well be using Google Maps on your site. Apparently, after you call certain Google Maps API functions, the Firebug console doesn’t work, and you will get a ‘Error: console is undefined’ message instead of the desired output. The fix is easy – call console.debug() (or .log etc.) before you make any Google Maps calls, the console will work just fine afterward. Thought I’d post this as it has been driving me nuts for the last hour.

I’ve been using a Polycom C100S as my main audio device for Skype during the last couple of months, and I have to say that it is by far the best handsfree device I have ever used, including my Cisco 7960.

Combined with Skype In and Skype Out, holding conference calls is a wonderful experience. On the Mac, the call buttons are not functional, but volume and mute work just fine. Maybe time to sniff out the USB commands and write a plugin for it that uses the Skype API to…aaargh!

I’ve been fighting with Movistar over the last couple of weeks over the iPhone‘s simlock that keeps it tied to their network, as I want to be able to use other SIM cards when I’m travelling. I don’t want to break my contract with them, but even so I offered to pay the cancellation fee in order for them to unlock my iPhone. In the contract that I signed, the cancellation fee applies to the service, not the terminal, meaning that if I cancel the service before the 24 month commitment, I have to pay a penalty. Nowhere does it say that the terminal needs to be locked to Movistar for the commitment to remain. In other words, they care about the monthly fee that offsets the lowered terminal price, they could care less about the phone itself.

So far, events have gone like this:

Day 1: Called 609, the Movistar customer service line, and asked about unlocking my iPhone. I proposed to pay the cancellation fee even though I was actually keeping my contract. The reply was that I needed to go through 12 billing cycles (eg 12 months) before they could unlock my iPhone.

Day 2: After rechecking my contract over and over, I found no clause stating the 12 billing cycle requirement. Second call, I am told the same, that there is no way to unlock the phone before 12 months have passed.

Day 3: I call them again, this time threatening to cancel my contract, in which case I would still be paying the penalty I was offering to voluntarily pay, but they would be left without the 21 months of commitment I had left, never mind the 9 months that supposedly had to pass before they could consider unlocking my iPhone. The maths are so obvious that it’s hard to see why they resist: I offer to pay around 350€ and keep my contract which runs at a monthly minimum of 60€, giving them a total in 12 months of 500€. Otherwise, I pay 350€ and they lose the extra 150€.

Day 4: I get a call back from customer service, telling them that they cannot unlock the iPhone 3G. I ask them to repeat that. “We do not have any means to unlock your iPhone even if we wanted to, Apple will not allow us to request unlock codes, as this terminal was released exclusively with Movistar“. WTF? In other countries you can unlock your iPhone through iTunes, after the operator gives you an unlock code, and they also have the device on exclusive country-wide deals with Apple – what gives?

Next step will be to contact Apple tomorrow and see if this is actually true. If it is, next step will be to start a formal procedure with the goverment department that deals with consumer issues.

This is sweet – finally, Microsoft has gotten rid of the pestering message Entourage displayed when it connected to an Exchange box and the SSL certificates were not set up in a very precise way, including having to employ SAN certificate workarounds. Here is the excerpt of the full release notes:

Reliability is improved when you try to securely connect to your mailbox on a computer that is running Exchange Server 2007. This update fixes an issue that occurs when you try to securely connect to your mailbox on a computer that is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 after you upgrade to the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 update. You receive the following warning message:

Unable to establish a secure connection to mailbox_servername because the server name or IP address does not match the name or IP address on the server’s certificate. If you continue, the information you view and send will be encrypted, but will not be secure.

Curious how all of a sudden we can swing from parties and conferences to loom and gloom. Over the last few days, several pieces of bad news have hit the world of startups, Silicon Valley, and venture capital.

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”^[1]

During the last few days, two VC heavyweights have contacted their portfolio companies CEOs, instructing them to get ready for a severe cash crunch and economic downturn. This means cutting costs wherever possible, concentrating on what you can do instead of what you think you can do, and plan to make your cash last for at least a year. This already means a death sentence for some companies who simply don’t have a year left in the bank, no matter how much they cut costs. Mike Arrington has posted interesting posts on both Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital’s “batten down the hatches” emails. A copy of the R.I.P. presentation has found its way to docstoc – a must read, with some excellent background on the source of the crisis.

“There’s a ninety-five pound Chinese man with a hundred sixty million dollars behind this door” ^[2]

While browsing through TechCrunch, I came across this shocking piece on Entellium, a CRM startup that managed to raise $50M in venture capital, apparently with the help of cooked books. By the look of things, the culprits weren’t exactly Ferran Adria, but more like a three-year-old left alone with a recipe book, ingredients and some matches.

The CEO and CFO were arrested by the FBI at their homes, and charged with wire fraud (PDF). Between 2006 and 2008, they reported much higher revenues to the board, in order to increase interest by potential investors into the company. This all ended when Melisah Wojtacha, a human resources VP, came across the fake books while clearing out the desk of a departed employee.

Investors include Seattle-based Ignition Partners, who invested some $19.7M into Entellium. There is more information on Seattle Times’ website. Why a company that had actual revenues needed to do this is unclear, unless it has to do with the reported Maserati Quattroporte the CEO drove, along with over-$1M-houses in Mercer Island and Seattle.

“Fellas, last year I made 3 million dollars, but your 50 thousand was the most fun. Are you ready? Then let’s go get ‘em.”^[3]

It would appear that in this particular case, there was little or no oversight from the board on the company’s books, other than relying on what was being reported by the CEO and CFO. The real numbers lay in the bank statements, and it is critical for effective oversight to match the books against them. Otherwise, it’s easy to see that having a couple million dollars in a bank account can prove tempting to some. In these last few years, series A investments have mainly consisted of low seven-digits amounts, usually even less than $1M, which could provide investors with less motivation to watch the financials in depth than if they had sunk $100M into the company. Running audits is expensive and time-consuming, so some may have settled for less. In cases like Entellium, it shows that it doesn’t pay off in the long run.

Movie quotes:

1. Soundtrack, The Jewel Of The Nile.
2. Danny Ocean in Ocean’s 11.
3. Janet Colgate in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels