11 April 2003

Games to drive 3G mobiles As expected, simple single-player games gradually evolve into simple multiplayer as bandwidth increases. 3G pricing still a problem though. 5:31:02 PM     comments

I felt rather emotional: BBC tests videocalls over 3G Rebecca Pike makes a videocall with H3G in Italy, and is impressed: But the feature that Hutchison hopes will draw the most people in is the video call. Having now experienced it myself, I think they could be right. It's one thing to be able to get more information on your phone. But speaking to someone at the same time as seeing the expression on their face, as well as being able to see their surroundings, is a different experience altogether. I felt rather emotional. 5:28:54 PM     comments

Pricing models for speech recognition NSC Declares a New Pricing Model for Speech Recognition, says Speechtek on 1 April: selling ASR boards instead of ASR channels. Interesting, but we still prefer flat-rate or per-minute pricing to either per-channel/resource or per-board pricing as it's simpler. 2:41:03 PM     comments

The (time) scales of architecture Daniel Libeskind on winning the competition to rebuild the WTC in NY: When we won this, Daniel said that this marked a profound change in our lives. We are moving to New York. It's a long commitment, ten to 15 years. Compared to software architecture, where you often find yourself working on multiple several-week or several-month projects in parallel (with the few but obvious exceptions for the teams working on code for shuttles, traffic systems, Windows 2000 etc), it is like Long Now stuff: "The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996 to develop Clock and "Library" projects as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution.". 2:09:27 PM     comments