The Open-Source way to Standardization

The benefits of a standardisation process are to ensure lower system costs, by increasing inter-operability. However as it has always been seen, standards are usually based on proprietary technology which brings into the whole case of counter-suits, royalty payments etc. All this in turn on increases the cost of technology. Patents were meant to prevent the copying of ideas, rather than becoming a source of income for companies which are good at suing others, and definitely not a means to promote monopoly of a select few.

The alternative to reducing the cost of technology is to use open-source as a means to creation of standards, which help in inter-operability. The core which is open-source can allow inter-operability, and additional features will be the innovation which companies can add over the core. As long as the core is relatively free to use, and based on an open-source model, you can have inter-operability and standardisation of technology, while promising that ugly patent litigation will not rear its head at a later stage. The open-source way for standardisation has only been explored in the software domain primarily, but perhaps it is time to explore its applicability to other technology areas like wireless communications.

Leader! - India growing towards being the largest wireless market!

India has become the fifth country to have a base of 100 million mobile phone subscribers. Only China, US, Japan and Russia have a larger mobile phone subscriber base. Officials pointed out that just two years ago, India's telephone subscriber base - both landlines and mobile phones - was only 75 million with a tele-density of a mere 7.08 percent. Thanks to the unprecedented growth in mobile telephony in the country, the tele-density has ballooned to 13.54 percent, with a total phone base of 150 million. Of the 100 million mobile phone users - 75.3 million use the Global Standard for Mobile telephony, better known as GSM, while 25.3 million use the code division multiple access technology (CDMA).

Is VoIP and Broadband Wireless going to be the next flood in communications to hit the country?

Design Concept: Paper Cellphone

(Source:YankoDesign)

Travelers often buy international pay phone cards when the are abroad. But the phone cards can't be bought anytime anywhere. And it is a problem that families, friends or even travel partners can't communicate with each other at anytime and they only can contact one way.

"Paper says" offer international roam service for communication and it can make users avoid the risk to break or lose the mobile phone they rent from local stores. "Paper says" is a mobile phone which can be recycled. Its price is low and it can be bought anywhere. It doesn't matter if it is dirtied or lost. Even overseas travelers can communicate anytime anywhere and don't consider the location of booths. It can be bought easily in every country's state-owned organization such as airport and museums, and privately owned institutions.

The design characters are easy-handling, simple, convenient and recyclable. The characters agree with the purpose of Tetra Pak. Tetra Pak has been taken effect for many years and is suitable for consumers' cognition and experience. The appearance design takes the pillow-style in Tetra Pak system as the basic frame. Its interior component is distributable and recyclable and its flat-style fits the space for stores to sell and is suitable for users to carry.

Due to the paper folding character, you just tear the paper along the dotted line and the paper's back you tore is the device for dialing. Use paper's character of lightness and thinness and combine with the LED, the dialing device is pervious to light. Combine with the character of paper and the image easy-carrying. "Paper says" satisfies the need to communication for travelers around the world and accomplishes the goal to communicate anytime anywhere.

Designer: Chia-Liang Hsu, Yi-Ting Chen, Jun-Lin Fu, Chih-Chieh Lee, Chun Chia Hsu, Allen Huang

Patents (Making money from litigation!)

See this: (source: CNET News)

Net2Phone, which filed its lawsuit last week in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that Skype infringed on its patent, No. 6,108,704. The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) patent was issued to Net2Phone in August 2000.

Net2Phone's lawsuit comes as the VoIP industry has seen a flood of new entrants from small start-ups to large, established Internet service providers.

Net2Phone alleges that Skype, a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay, violated its "point-to-point Internet Protocol" patent. The patent calls for the exchange of IP addresses between processing units in order to establish a direct communications link between the devices via the Internet.

Skype uses a peer-to-peer technology to operate its VoIP service, whereas companies such as Vonage and AT&T largely use a system that is centrally managed to transfer calls to a traditional phone network.

Do you not think that this is a really stupid patent? It calls for exchange of IP addresses in order to establish direct communictaion links... if you wish to send a packet directly to someone else, you will want to know its IP address, otherwise you will need an intermediate link which knows the IP address. This is the obvious logic which any college kid given a standard programming assignment to tackle such a problem will come up with! Where is the innovation?

A small list of Small Real Time Operating Systems!

The art of making a real time operating system continues to flourish, although currently the focus of innovation is on how small and efficient the RTOS can be made. These small-footprint RTOSs provide only the minimal OS support, including task management, inter-process communication, and memory management. File systems, graphics, and communication protocol stacks are usually available for an additional charge and can significantly increase a system's footprint. The following are the descriptions of a few of the RTOS which can be categorized as small (other RTOS like RTLinux, KURT etc have not been included, as they have not been considered as a small RTOS):

1. eCos is an RTOS that is dependable, license free, and truly open-source. It has been tested and ported on multiple platforms and is highly configurable in architecture. It supports processors based on ARM7, ARM9, ColdFire, IA32, MIPS, PowerPC, SuperH, Xscale, among others. Website: www.ecoscentric.com

2. CMX Systems has moved its CMX-RTX from CMX's usual 8- and 16-bit realm into the 32- and 64-bit world. The functionality is the same, and its footprint is on the order of 3.5 to 20 kbytes. CMX-Tiny+ is an even smaller, more limited RTOS. CMXRTX is only part of the puzzle, though. CMX's other protocol stacks and file systems also are available. Many of these can be used without an operating system. Royalty-free licenses start at $2200. Website: www.cmx.com

3. Green Hills Software's u-VelOSity is the little brother of VelOSity, which in turn is the basis for the high-end Integrity RTOS. u-VelOSity has a very small footprint, starting at 1.6 kbytes of flash and about 1 kbyte of SRAM. Its application programming interface (API) is upward-compatible with its siblings. Contact Green Hills Software for royalty-free pricing. Website: www.ghs.com

4. FreeRTOS is a portable, open source, mini Real Time Kernel - a free to download and royalty free RTOS that can be used in commercial applications. It is both preemptive and cooperative and has been ported on to ARM CORTEX M3, ARM7, HCS12, MSP430, AVR, PIC, and several other 8/16/32 bit processors. Website: www.freertos.org

5. ChorusOS operating system was developed by Sun Microsystems. It is a highly scalable and reliable embedded operating system that has established itself among top telecom suppliers. The ChorusOS operating system is used in public switches and PBXs, as well as within access networks, cross-connect switches, voice-mail systems, cellular base stations, cellular phones. Its features include component-based architecture for high configurability, allowing a high degree of scalability (requires 10KB RAM to run), multiple OS personalities and Inter-Process communication. Website: www.sun.com/chorusos

6. Express Logic's Threadx V5 offers a starting footprint that's under 6 kbytes of flash. It adds real-time performance metrics, run-time stack analysis, and built-in software trace support. A simplified timer interrupt and increased priority levels make the platform even more flexible. The new event-chaining feature allows a task to wait on a group of message queues. Royalty-free licenses start at $12,500. Website: www.rtos.com

7. Quadros' RTXC also targets a range of platforms. Its dual-mode version is optimized for RISC/DSP microcontrollers. A single-project license starts at $15,500. Website: www.quadros.com

8. Coyotos is a secure, microkernel-based operating system that builds on the ideas and experiences of the EROS project. Much of the code developed for EROS will migrate directly to Coyotos. The Coyotos project’s objectives include correcting the shortcomings of the earlier EROS design, demonstrate that an atomic kernel design scales up as well as down, bring up versions of Coyotos on large-scale multiprocessors, provide an efficient linux compatibility environment for use as a transitional runtime system, so that it is possible to explore adapting applications to a more secure API foundation, construct the kernel and key utilities in a new systems programming language (BitC) with a well-defined, mechanically-specified semantics (which will allow formal verification of security and correctness properties of the system and its key utilities). It is also one of the few RTOS which is being targeted at AMD-64, and multi-core processors. Website: http://www.coyotos.org

9. embOS is a very efficient and small OS, which features the entire palette of communication mechanisms such as mailboxes, events and different kinds of semaphores. All tasks and communication instances can be dynamically created, deleted and configured. It is fully priority controlled : out of the tasks in READY-state, the one with the highest priority is active. Tasks that have identical priorities are executed "quasi-simultaneously" in round robin. If no task is ready, embOS automatically puts the CPU in to a power-saving mode in the idle-task. Website: www.segger.com

10. L4 microkernel is a high-performance RTOS and extremely suitable for secure, highly reliable, embedded applications. Its design philosophy is based on the following: Trustworthiness of a system has a lot to do with its size, even well-engineered code has of the order of several defects per thousand lines of code (loc). Hence, a bigger system has inherently more bugs than a small system. This is particularly relevant for the kernel, as it is not subject to protection mechanisms. Therefore any kernel bug is potentially fatal for the system (which is the same as saying that the kernel is part of the trusted computing base (TCB). Minimising the exposure to faults means minimising the TCB. As the kernel is always part of the TCB, a small TCB requires a small kernel. L4 is one of the smallest kernels in existence and is known for its excellent performance. Website: http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4

11. eQip is a community project to develop QNX on handheld devices. It is a public extension of the QNX\'s iPAQ reference platform. eQip stands for "embedded QNX for information appliance". Website: http://eqip.openqnx.com/

12. RxDOS is a fast industrial strength DOS compatible RTOS, supports huge disk drives, FAT32 volumes, Windows 95/98 long filenames, coded in Assembly, and is open source with GPL license. Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rxdos/

13. Fusion RTOS is a priority based, preemptive, multitasking real-time operating system designed and optimized for next generation DSP architectures. Many DSP applications operate under tight memory requirements. The Fusion RTOS kernel can be configured to operate with as little as 1 - 1.5 K of DSP code space. The kernel uses less than 30 words of ram. Each task control block uses only 15 words of ram. The memory requirements of Fusion RTOS are miniscule. The Fusion RTOS kernel is extremely fast and is capable of a higher level of performance than any microcontroller based OS can deliver. Minimum context switch times can be as fast as 190 Cycles (4.75 usec @ 40 MIPs). Website: www.unicoi.com

14. MQX RTOS provides proven performance, with blazing real-time speed within a tiny footprint. The MQX RTOS is designed to be easy to configure to balance code size with performance requirements; alternative settings can be selected, benchmarked and iterated to optimize cost and performance. Depending on platform and options chosen, the MQX RTOS can be configured to take as little as 6K bytes of ROM, including kernel, interrupts, semaphores, queues and memory manager. The MQX RTOS delivers the performance that demanding customer have come to expect in leading RTOS solutions as well, on a 200 MHz PowerPC® MPC8248, interrupt latency came in at 0.331 μsec and context switch time was benchmarked at 0.558 μsec. Website: http://www.psti.com/products/mqx

15. On Time RTOS-32 is a royalty-free hard real-time embedded operating system for protected mode 32-bit x86 CPUs implements a Windows subset kernel in only 16k of memory. It provides about 250 Win32 API functions and can load Windows DLLs. Website: www.on-time.com/rtos-32.htm

16. Salvo RTOS is designed expressly for very-low-cost embedded systems with severely limited ROM and RAM. Typical applications use 1-2K ROM and 50-100 bytes of RAM. Salvo can be used for 8051 family and its derivatives, ARClite microRISC synthesizeable 8-bit core, ARM ARM7TDMI and Cortex-M3, Atmel AVR and MegaAVR, Motorola M68HC11, TI's MSP430 Ultra-Low Power Microcontroller, Microchip PIC12|14000|16|17|18 PICmicro MCUs, Microchip PIC24 MCUs and dsPIC DSCs and TI's TMS320C2000 DSPs. Website: www.pumpkininc.com/

17. SMX is a no royalty, full featured, fast, preemptive kernel. Unlike generic C kernels, it exploits strengths of x86 architecture and makes them easily used by programmers. Optimal mix of speed, compactness, functions. Supports ColdFire, PowerPC, x86. Website: www.smxrtos.com

18. Tics RTOS is a powerful real-time operating system with an easy to understand API. Tics is distributed under the GPL license. Tics can run on virtually any microprocessor; you only need to create a hardware support file for your particular processor. A sample hardware support file is provided that allows Tics to run under DOS. This sample hardware support file can be used as a template to create hardware support files for other processors. Website: www.concentric.net/~Tics/

19. Turbo Task is a tiny but full-featured and royalty-free real time operating system for the Rabbit and Z-80/Z180 microprocessors. TurboTask ranges in size from 1k to 2.5k, depending on the features that are used. TurboTask is written in 100% assembly code making it as small and as fast as possible. An economical and royalty-free binary license is available. Website: www.softools.com/turbotask.htm

20. Jbed is embedded Java RTOS with hard realtime capability, unique technology combines small footprint, high speed, and the safety and productivity of Java. It is a component-based, safe run-time system, for Java and Component Pascal. It allows remote reconfiguration with no down-time. Website: www.esmertec.com

21. µC/OS-II RTOS is a highly portable, ROMable, very scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel (RTOS) for microprocessors and microcontrollers. µC/OS-II runs on a large number of processor architectures. A Validation Suite developed for µC/OS-II provides all of the documentation necessary to deliver µC/OS-II as a pre-certifiable software component for safety critical systems, including avionics RTCA DO-178B and EUROCAE ED-12B, medical FDA 510(k), and IEC 61058 standard for transportation and nuclear systems. Website: www.ucos-ii.com/products/rtos/kernel/rtos.html

The Transparent IC ! - Now you see it ! Now you dont!

(source: Electronic Design )

John Wager, a professor of electrical engineering at Oregon State University, has to squint hard when he looks at his research team's latest invention, a transparent integrated-circuit. "You can put it in a window and not even know it's there," he says.

The experimental five-stage circuit, a ring oscillator, promises to open the door to a new generation of see-through electronics. One possible application would be transparent backplane displays that appear to hang invisibly in space

Besides fancy desktop and group presentation screens, the technology also could lead to enhanced "heads-up" information systems based on displayintegrated "smart windshields" rather than expensive and finicky projection systems in automobiles and other vehicles.

Transparent chips additionally could serve as the foundation for more efficient solar cells and enhanced LCDs, Wager says. The technology promises to help electronics manufacturers cram more circuitry into small spaces as well. "You can save a lot of space, particularly in portable devices, when the circuit board is also the screen," says Wager.

The chip is made from indium gallium oxide, a compound that offers high electron mobility, chemical stability, and physical stability. All of these characteristics, plus the ability to manufacture the chips at low temperatures, ultimately should help make the technology relatively inexpensive to produce in large quantities.

Wager believes his technology will give organic and polymer devices a run for their money in applications like large-area, flexible, disposable, and printed electronics. "After just a couple years of work, we're actually seeing better performance than organics and polymers," he says. "We're seeing mobilities, for example, that are higher than the theoretical limit of organic and polymer materials."

Although the prototype IC was constructed on a glass substrate, Wager is confident that he can build a version of the chip on a flexible plastic substrate that will still outperform its organic and polymer counterparts. Wager also foresees no problems in scaling the current prototype into larger, more complex circuits.

"A ring oscillator provides the proof that we can do a circuit," he says. "It also gives us a means of predicting what operating speeds we can achieve."

The IC can be produced with conventional photolithography techniques. Wager claims that his technology, produced by sputtering, is more manufacturable than organic or polymer devices, which are typically made by either vacuum evaporation or spin-coating processing. "Most industries would prefer to go into high-volume manufacturing using sputtering," he says.

Although Wager is hesitant to predict when transparent chips may be a commercial mainstay, he's encouraged by how quickly his research has progressed. It took less than three years to move from a discrete transparent transistor to the fivestage oscillator. "I don't see any technological or scientific show stoppers in the way," he says. "A lot of it is going to depend on whether a killer app appears that can make someone a lot of money."

oh kewl! Sliding-clamshell mobile !

(source: Mobiledia - Samsung invents sliding-clamshell design)

According to Samsung's patent application, clamshell phones have an advantage in portability due to their compact size; however the screen is typically very small. By contrast, sliding phones have large screens, but are often large. Additionally, LCDs on sliders are typically exposed without a protective cover, making them more susceptible to damage. Samsung's sliding-clamshell invention attempts to solve these problems by having a large, protected display while keeping a compact size.

The sliding-clamshell is similar in compactness to typical folding phones, with the addition of a transparent window protecting the screen beneath.

Opening the device, the soft external cover unfolds to become a track for the body, with a corrugated hinge linking the track in place. Sliding the body upwards, the phone unveils two keypad sections, reminiscent in layout to Nokia's 6800-series clamshells. Allowing consumers to use both hands in a horizontal view, the design is ideal for mobile gaming.

How to negotiate with the Americans

(source: Rediff Guest Column, article by: Anirban Dutta works with the IBM Software Group)

How many times have you felt that you were being pushed around, pointed at and critically judged at a business meeting involving American customers? You wanted to convey your thoughts, explain why it is unrealistic to expect a service request completion by certain date, only to realise that your entire plea to negotiate fell on deaf years.

Welcome to the world of cross-cultural negotiation. If this makes you feel any better, your American customers are constantly feeling the same level of desperation on not being able to communicate and come to conclusions while negotiating with you.

We are constantly negotiating whether we call it negotiation or not. In business environments, negotiation ranges from a request on when one can go on vacation to pricing on complex sales.

Due to the nature of today's flat business world, many times we work with customers, partners etc who live across the globe from us who we never see face to face. Our means of successful communication depend on our ability to understand cultural differences and present our thoughts accordingly.

I have seen from close quarters how many of my American and Indian business associates struggle culturally while negotiating. If you are aware of what the person across the table is expecting, you will handle the situation much better than other others who are not prepared.

In this article, I have provided a few business culture tips for negotiating with the Americans. My thoughts on this topic are not based on any thorough academic research, but comprise of what I have observed time and time again while doing business in India and the US. But before we go any further, here is a true case study that is close to heart on how culture affects business negotiation.

Case Study

I have been a loyal Friday lunch customer at an Indian restaurant in Dallas for eight years. Ravi, (real name withheld) the owner of the restaurant, is a very enterprising young man full of passion who has recently ventured into real estate in Hyderabad.

About three weeks back, he sought a meeting with me to invest in one of his land deals in India. Over a two-hour lunch, Ravi provided me a lot of details about the people he is working with and the reason behind why he is going through with the deal.

We talked about politics, business environment and, of course, cricket. He promised a very handsome expected ROI (return on interest) with an approximate investment time frame.

There was only one problem; his business pitch lacked any substantial hard metrics that backs up the merits of the deal. I knew Ravi very well and am well aware of his sound management capabilities.

Instead of making a judgment on the spot, I set a date to have another meeting where I brought in an American friend and a mentor Bob (real name not used again for privacy), a person who is proficient in carving out high end complex real estate deals in North America.

Below were some of the things Bob was looking for:

• Documented customer success stories
• Proof of current fiscal health for all partners scheduled to be part of this deal
• Foreword looking financial statements

The list goes on and on, all questions basically screaming one thing; show me some facts.

Instead of providing the hard measurable facts about this opportunity, Ravi was constantly reminding us about the executive backing he had for his project from top politicians, government officials etc. Ravi's approach was to provide us credible sources who can give us their opinion about this deal rather than supplying the core metrics.

While this may be an extreme case of two different mind frames and ways of doing business, I have seen many times that Indian businesses provide a lot of emphasis on situation and feelings coupled with some facts versus providing pure facts without any seasoning.

As a culture, traditionally we have always liked mingling with people and getting engaged in detailed discussions about everything under the sun. This approach described above puts the prime focus on relationship building and trust creation.

Although a lot of the bigger organisations that are doing more business with Americans have moved on to a pure fact based pitch to make their presentation more American mainstream, there are still many small to mid size Indian businesses who pitch purely from a relationship seeking detailed discussion approach.

Unless you are dealing with an American counterpart who is familiar with Indian ways and understand this type of Indo centric negotiation, I recommend you to focus mainly on providing your views from primarily a fact based approach with maybe a little bit of seasoning.

A few lessons

Articulation of fact based information: I should have known better that Ravi and Bob have two different ways of going about business. Before I engaged Bob, one thing I could have done was to send a proposal template to Ravi asking him to fill it up with facts about this project.

Ravi might have had to go and dig them up, but it would have provided him a strong business case to convince Bob and me about this land deal.

When you are dealing with an American, it may work to your best interest if you send a simple proposal with information about your agenda prior to your meeting, and make a list of things you want to know from the other person.

You should keep this document as simple as possible for clarity. Jeanne Brett, a distinguished professor from Northwestern University who specialises in cross-cultural negotiations, suggests this approach of applying proposals to gather information as very effective.

I have personally used this approach in other occasions where I have seen a lot of success via this method of understanding.

Setting up the right expectation to reach true discovery: In my current sales role in IBM, I have to meet many people from different cultures from all over the world. One thing that I have started doing has provided me good help in bridging the business culture gap while negotiating. Typically all of us are proficient in going over the meeting agenda before the meeting starts.

What we do not do is acknowledge the fact that there are many people from different cultures and their ways of deducing information may be completely different. I acknowledge upfront the fact that there is a lot of cultural diversity in the group and suggest everybody to ask more questions for clarity.

Throughout the meeting I provide little nudges to ask more leading questions related to the topic. This approach leaves little to interpretation and more to the problem discovery aspect of negotiation.

Understanding status-based persuasion versus reference based persuasion: Americans by nature value independence and self-dependence more than hierarchy and status. Indians, like most Asians, put a lot of focus on hierarchy and standing of an individual.

We grow up in a society where we learn to respect and listen to adults, in many cases even if they are wrong. We address our neighbours by calling them uncle or aunts from early childhood.

When we move into business, we tend to show a lot of respect and value to the folks who are higher up in the organisation or higher up in society. So, when they endorse something, it really means a lot to us.

In our story, Ravi was trying to convince Bob with a status based persuasion approach. Bob on the other hand was constantly asking if these ministers, senior officials were engaged in similar real estate deals. Bob was trying to understand if Ravi was providing these names as credible references who 'has been there, done that' with Ravi. The fact that these guys did not participate in a deal like this but were willing to vow for success criterion regarding this effort did not go well with Bob.

Again, if you are negotiating with an American who is not prone to Indian ways, it may be better to provide credible reference that may not be big names rather than using big names to receive status based concession.

Above were a few observations and suggestions that helped me bridge the business negotiation gap between Indians and Americans. I wish you all the best in your business negotiations with the Americans.