Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2009

Pocket Mobility - A Hot Spot That Travels

Novatel's MiFi, a 3G Wi-Fi router. A personal cellular Hot Spot that one can share ... that is NOT a USB stick and does not require a change in the network software settings of ones laptop [CLICK image for video]. Image Credit: Novatel

Pocket Mobility - A Hot Spot That Travels

That's right, a hot spot that becomes you. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200 that will be available from Verizon starting in mid-May that allows the person carrying the battery-powered, rechargeable, cellular, Wi-Fi hot spot to easily share the internet access.

The "MiFi" device has its Wi-Fi access password printed on the bottom, so if one wishes share (or sell time on) the uplink, one can can invite someone to join networking simply by showing the password to them (it's printed on each card).

This all sounds pretty cool until one realizes that this device is little more than a form factor change from a standard USB plug-in portal with its associated data upload/download limitations and costs (not to mention - RANGE - it is only about 30 feet).

So, why not get a "MiFi", a sandwich-board, and a busy, independent coffee shop and go into business? Sell access in areas where overcharging is rampant, like posh hotels, and airports. All one would have to do is go to critical time crunch convention centers where access may be limited, or purposely restricted, and open up shop for .... say 10 minutes, then move on?

It's a business model for a new age in these trying economic times ... or not!



This excerpted and edited from the New York Times -

Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed
By DAVID POGUE - Published: May 6, 2009

Someday, we’ll tell our grandchildren how we had to drive around town looking for a coffee shop when we needed to get online, and they’ll laugh their heads off. Every building in America has running water, electricity and ventilation; what’s the holdup on universal wireless Internet?

Getting online isn’t impossible, but today’s options are deeply flawed. Most of them involve sitting rooted in one spot — in the coffee shop or library, for example. (Sadly, the days when cities were blanketed by free Wi-Fi signals leaking from people’s apartments are over; they all require passwords these days.)

If you want to get online while you’re on the move, in fact, you’ve had only one option: buy one of those $60-a-month cellular modems from Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile or AT&T. The speed isn’t exactly cable-modem speed, but it’s close enough. You can get a card-slot version, which has a nasty little antenna protuberance, or a U.S.B.-stick version, which cries out to be snapped off by a passing flight attendant’s beverage cart.

A few laptops have this cellular modem built in, which is less awkward but still drains the battery with gusto.

But imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?

Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200.
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In essence, the MiFi converts that cellular Internet signal into an umbrella of Wi-Fi coverage that up to five people can share. (The speed suffers if all five are doing heavy downloads at once, but that’s a rarity.)
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How is this amazing? Let us count the ways.

First, you’re spared the plug-and-unplug ritual of cellular modems. You can leave the MiFi in your pocket, purse or laptop bag; whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera or game gadget, or wake up your iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re online.

Last week, I was stuck on a runway for two hours. As I merrily worked away online, complete with YouTube videos and file downloads, I became aware that my seatmate was sneaking glances. As I snuck counter-glances at him, I realized that he had no interest in what I was doing, but rather in the signal-strength icon on my laptop — on an airplane where there wasn’t otherwise any Wi-Fi signal. “I’m sorry,” he finally said, completely baffled, “but how are you getting a wireless signal?” He was floored when I pulled the MiFi from my pocket, its power light glowing evilly.

If he’d had a laptop, I would have happily shared my Wi-Fi cloud with him. The network password is printed right there on the bottom of the MiFi itself.
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The second huge advantage of the MiFi is that, as with any wireless router, you can share its signal with other people; up to five road warriors can enjoy the same connection. Your youngsters with their iPod Touches in the back of the van could hop online, for example, or you and your colleagues could connect and collaborate on a corporate retreat.
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Some footnotes: First, the MiFi goes into sleep mode after 30 minutes of inactivity, to prolong its battery life.

Yes, it means that a single charge can get you through a full day of on-and-off Internet noodling, even though the battery is supposed to run for only four hours a charge (it’s rated at 40 hours of standby). But once the MiFi is asleep, your Wi-Fi bubble is gone until you tap the power button.
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A final note: If your laptop has a traditional cellular modem, you can turn on a Mac OS X or Windows feature called Internet Sharing, which rebroadcasts the signal via Wi-Fi, just like the MiFi.

But the MiFi is infinitely easier to use and start up, doesn’t lock you into carrying around your laptop all the time, has better range and works even when your laptop battery is dead. (The MiFi recharges from a wall outlet; it still works as a hot spot while it’s plugged in.)

It’s always exciting when someone invents a new product category, and this one is a jaw-dropper. All your gadgets can be online at once, wherever you go, without having to plug anything in — no coffee shop required. Heck, it might even be worth showing the grandchildren.
Reference Here>>

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Traffic Jams On The Information Superhighway Explained

The Harbor Freeway Interchange is the largest and tallest freeway interchange in Southern California. This massive 5-stack interchange connects the Century Freeway (I-105) with the Harbor Freeway (I-110). Nestled between its soaring ramps is a 3-level train and bus depot. Image Credit: g. s. george (2007)

Traffic Jams On The Information Superhighway Explained

In an article published in Britain’s leading financial publication, the Financial Times, the Chief Technology Officer of Nortel Systems does a pretty good job of explaining the current and future landscape of the demands consumers are placing on today’s internet.

The demand and applications requiring more data to be transferred in shorter periods of time combined with the availability and expansion of mobility devices, are having their effect on the efficiency and confidence in the structure of the whole of this New Media world.

If consumer and business applications are to be successful in the future, changes will need to take place in order to have a system that will deliver the desired communication requirements demanded by all who participate.

Using MobileFrame's Smart Architecture, novice computer users can build and deploy sophisticated mobile applications, and make changes, without the need for professional IT services. When the MobileFrame Monitor autonomously senses network availability, it transmits those processes to selected remote client devices across any wired or wireless TCP/IP connection (WAN, LAN, 802.11, GPRS, device dock). The MobileFrame Client operates on any .NET enabled handheld device, including Pocket PC PDA's, Tablet PC's or Laptops. Image Credit: mobileworxs.co.uk

This excerpted and edited from the Financial Times (UK) –

Satisfying the bandwidth monster in all of us
By John Roese - Published: June 18 2008 03:00 Last updated: June 18 2008 03:00

The internet today is much like a motorway or freeway, with its multiple lanes, on and off-ramps, and its ability to move large volumes of traffic made up of different types of vehicles from point A to B quite effectively most of the time.

More often than not, things run smoothly, but during rush hour, arteries get congested and traffic slows to a crawl, no matter what vehicle you drive.

At the heart of the internet are fat "pipes" - the fibre-optic equivalents of the LA Freeway - which can carry huge amounts of "traffic" in the form of voice, data, video and any combination thereof. The myriad on and off-ramps - connections that telecom service providers have hooked up to it - are not quite so fat or quite so fast.

The "vehicles" traveling over the internet form different-sized traffic streams; roughly speaking, smaller streams carry voice, medium-sized streams carry data such as e-mail with attachments and internet links, and monster streams carry video.

And, as on the LA Freeway, traffic jams and accidents on the internet can and do occur. In the internet world that can mean a delay in packets arriving at their destination - which, for an internet phone call can result in a voice sounding like a Dalek - or packets arriving without all the "passengers", potentially causing the video you are watching or the phone conversation you are having to terminate.

It is these traffic jams and accidents that are causing increasing concern for internet service providers (ISPs), who bear the brunt of the resulting end-user road rage. This is in spite of the fact that it is end users themselves wreaking the havoc as they embrace and demand services and applications that require increasingly large amounts of bandwidth.
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Downloading a DVD on demand takes the equivalent bandwidth of 16m web page downloads, 400,000 e-mails, or nearly 2,000 iTunes songs (the size of web, music and e-mail files varies greatly, but these are realistic averages). And one movie on a dual-layer Blu-ray disk consumes the staggering equivalent of 100m web page downloads, 2.5m e-mails, and more than 12,000 iTunes songs. Suddenly, the images of consumers as bandwidth-hungry monsters and the LA Freeway as a car park spring to mind.
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The new services are gobbling up huge amounts of bandwidth, to the point where we have virtually eliminated the "bandwidth glut" of unused capacity that was built up during the late 1990s dotcom boom. We are, in fact, speeding towards a "bandwidth crisis".
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Anything that would benefit from being connected is being connected. This is not just mobile phones and PDAs, but home appliances, cars, clothing, industrial machinery and billions of small sensors that can be used for everything from monitoring patients' vital signs for remote diagnostics and emergency alerting, to environmental conditions and countless other items.

So, what can we do?

First, we need to expand the freeway but without the year-long roadworks that cause endless frustration.
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This is something Nortel is working on. We are making it so that each road (that is - a single-strand of optical fibre) can support up to 80 lanes (called wavelengths in the telecom world). The result is that one road can move eight terabytes (thousand billion bytes) of information per second compared to less than one terabyte today. (To provide some context, the entire UK National Archive contains approximately 60 terabytes of data.)

Most importantly, this expansion can be achieved by upgrading existing fibre networks - without the delay, cost and inconvenience of new fibre roll-outs. As well as making the internet motorway bigger, it needs to be made more efficient, for example by replacing the "traffic lights" of legacy internet systems with "roundabouts" that keep traffic flowing, and by making the on-ramps much bigger.

Is there a way to sate the ravenous appetite of the bandwidth monster in us all?

No, not really. We have an insatiable - and natural - need to communicate with each other in as rich a way as possible and we will take advantage of every type of media in order to do so. That will never change.

But by applying breakthrough technology and by looking intelligently at the evolution of the internet, there is a way to ensure we never go hungry.
Reference Here>>

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Get On The Stick! ... With Cuba’s IT Underground

Having a USB memory stick is like carrying a portable hard drive the size of a packet of chewing gum. USB memory sticks are the fastest in the flash memory card industry with transfer rates up to 60MB/s and capacities ranging from 64MB to 4GB. Caption & Image Credit: mediaheaven.co.uk

Get On The Stick! ... With Cuba’s IT Underground

Necessity is the mother of invention – or in this case adaptation. Information technology in Cuba, with its heavy-handed oversight of human activity, is in a process of breaking out of the grip of the government sanctions against the freedom of information sharing and publishing.

News, information, and entertainment media in Cuba, is hard to come by unless one is able to afford the time to log on to a computer in one of the few “Cyber Cafés”, have access to a tourist hotel internet portal, is a student, or has access to a smuggled dish and secretly grab the information for later viewing and sharing - OFFLINE!

Dutch made , USB Memory sticks manually selected for their natural beauty, and professionally handmade into unique and personal USB memory sticks. From ooms. Order Online - 256 MB - 45 Euro 1GB - 70 Euro. Caption & Image Credit: oooms.nl

OFFLINE in Cuba is an intranet (an in-country internet) patched together through a “postal service” email communication connection that the government is having trouble shutting down. The “Whack-A-Mole” process the government is left with can not stop the viral sharing aided with the use of USB memory sticks.

At an e-mail center in Havana, customers work under an employee’s watchful eye. Old Havana has only one true Internet cafe, down from three a few years ago. Caption & Image Credit: Jose Goitia - The New York Times

This excerpted from The New York Times -

Cyber-Rebels in Cuba Defy State’s Limits
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. - New York Times, HAVANA - March 6, 2008

A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.

Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly.

Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.
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“It passes from flash drive to flash drive,” said Ariel, 33, a computer programmer, who, like almost everyone else interviewed for this article, asked that his last name not be used for fear of political persecution. “This is going to get out of the government’s hands because the technology is moving so rapidly.”

Cuban officials have long limited the public’s access to the Internet and digital videos, tearing down unauthorized satellite dishes and keeping down the number of Internet cafes open to Cubans. Only one Internet cafe remains open in Old Havana, down from three a few years ago.

Hidden in a small room in the depths of the Capitol building, the state-owned cafe charges a third of the average Cuban’s monthly salary — about $5 — to use a computer for an hour. The other two former Internet cafes in central Havana have been converted into “postal services” that let Cubans send e-mail messages over a closed network on the island with no links to the Internet.
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Young people here say there is a thriving black market giving thousands of people an underground connection to the world outside the Communist country.


Swiss army knife with USB memory stick Memory size: 128MB 256MB 512MB 1GB 2GB 4GB 8GB. Caption & Image Credit: sz-wholesale.com

People who have smuggled in satellite dishes provide illegal connections to the Internet for a fee or download movies to sell on discs. Others exploit the connections to the Web of foreign businesses and state-run enterprises. Employees with the ability to connect to the Internet often sell their passwords and identification numbers for use in the middle of the night.

Hotels catering to tourists provide Internet services, and Cubans also exploit those conduits to the Web.

Even the country’s top computer science school, the University of Information Sciences, set in a campus once used by Cuba’s spy services, has become a hotbed of cyber-rebels. Students download everything from the latest American television shows to articles and videos criticizing the government, and pass them quickly around the island.
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The video of Mr. Alarcón’s clash with students was leaked to the BBC and CNN, giving the world a rare glimpse of the discontent among the young with the system.
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Another event many people witnessed through the digital underground was the arrival in the United States of Carlos Otero, a popular television personality and humorist in Cuba who defected in December while on a trip to Toronto.

Illegal antennas caught signals from Miami television stations, which youths turned into digital videos and shared. Though the event smacked more of celebrity news than politics, it would never have been shown on the official media.

Some young journalists have also started blogs and Internet news sites, using servers in other countries, and their reports are reaching people through the digital underground.

Yoani Sánchez, 32, and her husband, Reinaldo Escobar, 60, established Consenso desde Cuba , a Web site based in Germany. Ms. Sánchez has attracted a considerable following with her blog, Generación Y, in which she has artfully written gentle critiques of the government by describing her daily life in Cuba. Ms. Sánchez and her husband said they believed strongly in using their names with articles despite the possible political repercussions.


Shortly before Raúl Castro was elected president last week to replace his ailing brother, Fidel, Ms. Sánchez wrote a piece describing what sort of president she wanted. She said the country did not need a soldier, a charismatic leader or a great speaker, but “a pragmatic housewife” who favored freedom of speech and open elections.

Writing later about Raúl Castro’s first speech as president, she criticized his vague promises of change, saying they were as clear as the Rosetta Stone was when it was first found. Both essays would be impossible to publish in Cuba.
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Because Ms. Sánchez, like most Cubans, can get online for only a few minutes at a time, she writes almost all her essays beforehand, then goes to the one Internet cafe, signs on, updates her Web site, copies some key pages that interest her and walks out with everything on a memory stick. Friends copy the information, and it passes from hand to hand. “It’s a solid underground,” she said. “The government cannot control the information.”

It is spread by readers like Ricardo, 28, a philosophy student at the University of Havana who sells memory sticks to other students.
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Like many young Cubans, Ricardo plays a game of cat and mouse with the authorities. He doubts that the government will ever let ordinary citizens have access to the Internet in their homes. “That’s far too dangerous,” he said. “Daddy State doesn’t want you to get informed, so it preventively keeps you from surfing.”

Pedro, a midlevel official with a government agency, said he often surfed Web sites like the BBC and The Miami Herald at work, searching for another view of the news besides the ones presented in the state-controlled media. He predicted that the 10,000 students studying the Internet and programming at the University of Information Sciences would transform the country over time, opening up more and more avenues of information.

“We are training an army of information specialists,” he said.

Reference Here>>

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Internet Telephony – Leveraging Assets

Keynote: Norman Stout, MITEL, CEO US Operations - Image Credit: Edmund Jenks, copyright 2007

Internet Telephony – Leveraging Assets

In Los Angeles this week, a conference and tradeshow focusing on technologies and strategies aligned to take advantage of the “New Phone” world was covered over a three day period.

INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO managed by Technology Marketing Corporation, was attended mostly by technically directed operatives. It was, however, extremely informative for those who would be familiar with some of the niche communication applications one might use every day ... but may not have been exposed to the whole picture of phone based communications and systems.

Discussions about matching up analog signals with digital, open systems verses proprietary systems, value-added partnerships, small office / home office, scalability, unified communications, access points, enterprise mobility, internet protocol television (IPTV), and more were engaged and further explored on how all of this can be applied to the internet as a business proposition for profit.

It is an exciting time for the world of business phone systems in that many of the analog systems in place require a heavy investment in infrastructure, yet the business operations that own them would like to take advantage of the digital capabilities the internet can offer.

A couple of efforts focused on leveraging assets that exist and are in use as a normal way of communication and effort management.

One company named VoSKY, leverages the proven technology used by Skype to get the most out of voice over internet protocol (VOIP).

VoSKY Exchange 91xx - Image Credit: VoSKY

This excerpted from the VoSKY website –

The company's flagship product is VoSKY Exchange

A family of enterprise-grade VoIP gateways that allow companies to optimize Skype for the business environment. VoSKY Exchange VoIP gateways seamlessly integrate with existing TDM or IP PBX phone systems and enable business-class applications that help companies reduce communications costs and improve productivity. VoSKY's product line also includes cost-effective consumer VoIP devices for using Skype on any traditional handset, mobile phone, or speakerphone. All VoSKY products have received certification from Skype.
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Overview
The VoSKY Exchange 91xx is rack-mountable and adds up to eight outgoing Skype lines without changes to existing PBX or phone equipment. Multiple Exchange boxes can be set up to interconnect multiple offices anywhere in the world, enabling free calls between locations. Calls to other Skype users are free, while calls to non-Skype users are charged at low-cost SkypeOut rates or at a flat rate when using Skype Unlimited.

Skype Trunking for your PBX
Skype is the world's largest VoIP network with over 200 million users, and the VoSKY Exchange enables businesses to leverage Skype as a trunking solution for their existing PBX phone systems. Utilizing Skype trunking as an alternative to the PSTN, businesses can substantially save on both domestic long-distance and international calls.

Works with almost any Analog or IP PBX
A major advantage of the VoSKY Exchange is its seamless integration with existing analog or IP PBX phone systems. Businesses are able to preserve the investment in their existing phone systems while enjoying the cost savings and flexibility of Skype without a major forklift in equipment.
Reference Here>>

“Forklift” is an industry term meaning to move existing equipment out and bring all new equipment in. Basically, a total overhaul of the communications system.

Another business effort that updates an existing system is able to utilize commonly available assets is Interactive Intelligence.

Instead of developing innovation from whole cloth, they asked ... why not innovate off of existing and robust software management, database access platforms, and programs developed and proven by Microsoft? This accounts for some of the vision that drives the solutions put forward by Interactive Intelligence.

Microsoft Suite Of Management Software Solutions - Image Credit: Interactive Intelligence

Excerpted and edited from the Interactive Intelligence website –

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ)

Provides the most innovative contact center and IP telephony products and services available.
Interactive Intelligence solutions are modular in nature, built with proven, award-winning products that push the edge of technology to deliver a truly best-of-class offering.

The company's innovation and experience maximizes customer value with a product line that helps businesses more rapidly respond to change, while reducing the cost and complexity associated with managing interactions.

From sophisticated contact center automation applications - including automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), speech recognition, Web collaboration, remote agent support, supervisory monitoring, predictive dialing, call recording, reporting and more - to SIP-based enterprise IP telephony, unified communications and messaging, and customer self-service, Interactive Intelligence offers a flexible, easy-to-manage alternative to proprietary, hardware-centric solutions.

The Interactive Intelligence product line is ideal for contact centers of all sizes, small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), global 1,000 organizations, and large, distributed enterprises, including those with mobile workers. Key vertical markets include financial services, healthcare, legal, and higher education.
Reference Here>>

Interaction Client .NET Screen where the administrator can drag and drop who needs to attend the conference call - Image Credit: Interactive Intelligence

And this recent product announcement from an Interactive Intelligence Press Release –

Interactive Intelligence to Offer Interaction Message Indicator™ for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging Users
INDIANAPOLIS (July 10, 2007)

Interactive Intelligence Inc. (Nasdaq: ININ) is releasing a new standalone Interaction Message Indicator™ application, which monitors Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging mailboxes so that users are alerted to new voicemail messages via a light on their desktop phones.
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Interactive Intelligence plans to continue meeting customer demand with additional complementary applications for Exchange Server 2007 UM users, such as personal notification features, according to Staples.

Interaction Message Indicator™ can work with existing third-party phone systems, including the Interactive Intelligence IP PBX. The application offers a Web-based interface designed for easy set-up, administration, monitoring and reporting.

Interactive Intelligence first released its standards-based, single-platform business communications software in 1997 to eliminate the cost and complexity introduced by individual point products. The software offers contact centers and enterprises a wide array of communications applications, including SIP-based voice-over-IP switching, automatic call distribution, speech-enhanced interactive voice response, unified messaging, call recording, and more. It also includes pre-integrated plug-ins for Microsoft Dynamics products, Microsoft Office products, and Office Communications Server.

Interactive Intelligence is unveiling its Interaction Message Indicator™ at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, July 10 to 12, at the Denver Convention Center.
Reference Here>>

Adapting and integrating existing functional processes as a transitional strategy makes sense, especially when the weight of an existing investment in an extensive infrastructure allows for very little change.

So get out there ... leverage those assets! Together, the analog and digital waters are fine.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

QR Based PM Code - The Best 3D Symbology Ever, Really!

Normal PM Code with data memory capability uses 8-24 colors. Memory ranges from about 0.6MB~1.8MB (4,083,264 figures). Image Credit: C.I.A.

QR Based PM Code - The Best 3D Symbology Ever, Really!

And it is a 5th Generation Media symbology known as the PM Code. With this printed symbology one can use a simple cellphone with a camera and unleash incredible variants of communication ranging from simple data, to sound, to video … all at the snap of a camera button on the phone.

In the worlds of automatic identification and information technology, the question of what is the best machine-readable information-packed symbology ever has been answered ... Again!

Why?

Well, until someone comes up with a device readable code that can hold about 1.236 GB of information (2,854,408,421,376 figures) - Deliver as much information from a printed media symbology (code) to have a phone with the corresponding decode program and a camera play a low-resolution video with sound for approximately 20 seconds, or have the phone reach out automatically to entertainer, advertiser, and manufacturer websites to retrieve additional database stored information via Internet Protocol … then one can dispute this claim!!!

IP (Internet Protocol) based PM Code uses 256 colors. Memory ranges to about 1,236GB (2,854,408,421,376 figures). Image Credit: C.I.A.

The best symbology ever?

The best symbology ever may well be the PM Code (PM = Paper Memory), developed by a relatively new Japanese start-up company known as Content Idea of Asia Co., Ltd. (C.I.A.), The algorithm basis comes from the DENSO Wave - developed QR Code – originally intended for use in tracking and aiding the complex task of automobile parts manufacturing and sourcing throughout the automobile assembly process.
CL Code with data memory capability. Memory ranges from about 72KB (170,136 figures). Image Credit: C.I.A.

C.I.A. also has developed a “sister” code known as the CL Code (CL = Clear Code) which describes the effect of being able to add a code that does not need to be dark contrast against a light background to be decoded. This allows the information reference code to be laid on top of media in a transparent, layered look - in order to not take away from the printed media onto which it is applied.

Simple CL Code application in tomato photo. Image Credit: C.I.A.

The advantages of using the CL Code is that the customer’s viewing of marketing designs and images will not be hampered due to the application of an identifying Physical World Hyperlink or Physical World Identifier/Connection for the customer to use when getting additional information. One technique suggests that the CL Code may be printed in a band of matching product colored ink on the bottle. The information would not be able to be decoded until the contents of the bottle have been consumed or poured out … thus leaving the CL Code in a readable format.



Content Idea of Asia Co., Ltd. Explains the concept this way. Both the CL Code and its more robust “sister” PM Code are examples of 5th Generation Media.

What does this "5th Generation Media mean? Well,

1st Generation Media refers to paper media such as magazines, newspapers, and other printed media stratum.

2nd Generation Media refers to audio radio communication.

3rd Generation Media refers to television, video, and film media communications.

4th Generation Media refers to Information Technologies (IT) found in the digital world of computers and cellular telephones.

So now we come full circle and fuse the previous forms of communication together.

5th Generation Media allows the fusion of all forms of media to interact and cooperate, in order to take the advantage of each form to deliver a more effective level of communication through the application of this unique database found in a 3D (three-dimensional) color QR based code. A simple cellphone with a camera can unleash incredible variants of communication ranging from simple data, to sound, to video - YES VIDEO! … all at the snap of a camera button on the phone.

No IP address – just the PM Code and the “old media” adverts come to life! Applications include listening to portions of songs, videos, short how-to-use vignettes, security for access control, save, re-write, and store data media on flat format paper (instead of CD’s, DVD’s, or HD discs), and well, the sky is the limit.

Hey, how’s this - you are a curator of a museum and you would like the patrons to enjoy the exhibit a little more deeply with sound descriptions of what they are seeing. Place PM Codes next to each display and voila, the patron can hear all they wanted to know about the painting and the painter - complete with a video snippet on the painter’s technique. All of this interactive information without involving the audio/visual department and/or the equipment investment.

Next up?

The addition of smell - Okay, so this may be a little overboard ... but you get the idea!


HT: Content Idea of ASIA co., Ltd.