My Other Passion

My other passion has brought me halfway around the world to Barcelona, to attend the GSMA Mobile World Congress. This is not a shameless plug, I am really passionate about my work, and the industry in which it thrives. It's also the perfect way to forget the fact I'll be attempting an Ironman in less than 2 weeks.

Rewind. My passion for the Internet started way back in the late 80's/early 90's, when the world wide web did not even exist. Access to the Internet then was via direct dial-up (IDD), with a whopping 9.6kbps US Robotics Modem. The 'Internet' then consisted of Gopher Sites, and Usenets. Content was very limited but the idea of a web of networks intrigued me. Search engines back then were called Archie, Jughead and Veronica. Suprisingly, Jughead and Veronica actually stood for something - Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display & Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computer Archives, although they were chosen first for obvious reasons, then forced to be acronyms later on.

A few years later came the real Internet - the World Wide Web. By then, the US Robotics modem was a speedy 14.4kbps, and local ISPs were born. The Google then was Webcrawler or AltaVista. THE web browser was Netscape Navigator, years before Microsoft 'eased' them out in a very controversial way.



I was in highschool and began studying Internet programming as a hobby. I built my first website and got hooked. After college, I went straight into programming. Ever since, my work (and now social) life has revolved around the Internet.

Fast foward to 2010. The buzzwords here at the MWC are SmartPhones, 4G, Mobile Internet, Mobile Payment and Telco 2.0. I encountered some interesting products and solutions over the first 2 days.

What caught my eye (pun intended) was a quite amusing but very interesting product by NTT Docomo - Eye Controlled Earphones. Yes, you heard me right. Apparently, slight eye movements cause electrical differences which are detected by tiny electrodes which reside on the earphones. Volume control consisted of rotating your gaze as if it were a volume knob. Looking left then right meant a play/pause, and looking to the right twice meant next track. Wild eh? What's next?

Demo-ing the earphones

This afternoon, I caught the demo of the Windows 7 Mobile Phone. Finally, it looks like Microsoft got it right. The OS is based on the Zune platform, so it's more a Multimedia device than a Microcomputer...thank God. Who the hell wants to see that little start button on the bottom left corner in a phone? It was very Iphone-esque but added some cool features, like Wifi synching. They had a cool setup too, a giant touch screen which served as a phone emulator.

Sweet looking interface!

Other cool stuff were...

Team Highroad's Scott Plasma @ HTC booth


Team Highroad's Jersey @ HTC booth

Chicks at the CBOSS booth

Whoops! Back to work.

T minus 9 days and counting...

'Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say. '
- from Pink Floyd's 'Time'