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Archive for April, 2006

The Mobile Office

Wednesday, April 19th, 2006

There is a gross inequality in the distribution of empowering Information and Communication Technology (ICT).  Access to productivity and communication solutions is currently the domain of the richest one sixth of the world, with the remaining five sixths remaining resolutely disenfranchised with regards personal computing, mobile communication, and instant processing of  information.  This is the ‘Digital Divide,’ an unnecessarily damaging situation where the people who most need productivity solutions are unable to obtain them.  In effect, the vast majority of the human race is condemned to prolonged poverty and inefficient economic, political and social solutions due to neglect and a lack of effort with regards sharing technology.

There are some positive initiatives underway to introduce modern ICT technologies into developing nations.  Perhaps the most successful are the campaigns to recycle mobile phones into under-privileged nations, thus giving disparate populations access to rudimentary voice communication solutions.  More ambitious projects exist too, ranging from serious efforts to recycle old personal computers through to the $100 laptop being advocated by Nicholas Negroponte from MIT labs.

This paper wishes to make a further contribution to positive suggestions for ICT empowerment and a reduction in the Digital Divide.  The basic premise is that it might be possible to utilise and extend existing technologies to provide functional systems for ICT in developing nations.  The method for incremental empowerment utilises a technology that is already deployed in developing nations: the mobile phone.

Mobile phones provide two essential elements of ICT infrastructure.  They are connected to a digital network, and they have processing capacity.  Newer telephones are capable of running applications, and have rudimentary support for email and Internet communication.  Apart from having three inherent design limitations regarding small input devices, limited screen size and limited memory, they provide an excellent ICT front-end.

We will address the limitations of mobile devices, firstly examining the critical issue of hardware.  Mobile phones don’t have keyboards that are suitable for typing, and they don’t have screens suitable for running productivity applications.

There is a preexisting solution for enabling the connection of keyboards to mobile phones.  It is called a USB port, and many mobile phones already have these ports for things like PictBridge (a way to print directly from phone to printer).  A simple USB connection and a little bit of tweaking of the internal hardware design of the mobile phone would allow a user to connect a standard PC keyboard to the device.

The second hardware issue is a little bit more difficult to resolve.  The limited screen size of mobile phones is an engineering reality and cannot be avoided.  To increase screen real estate requires either increasing the physical size of the mobile phones, or implementing an extension to the mobile phones that will allow images to be output to external devices such as television sets.

The first option is not viable, as increasing the size of the mobile phones would reduce their utility as portable telephones, and the larger physical screen size would reduce battery life exponentially.  In effect, they would no longer be mobile phones.  They would be small notebook computers with ring tones.

The second option is viable, but requires a certain level of commitment from manufacturers to introduce an output port  on all new mobile phones.  The port would be designed to work in conjunction with a special cable to allow connection from the mobile phone to the aerial input on a television set.  This would provide the mobile phone with a display area of 720×480 on NTSC televisions and  720×576 on PAL televisions.

This mobile phone output port would  provide little utility in developed nations outside of slide-shows and video screenings, but would act as an essential hardware extension for turning modern mobiles into fully-fledged ICT solutions in developing nations.  People in developing nations already have access to television sets, and increasingly they have access to mobile phones.

With a standard PC keyboard, a mobile phone, a television set and cable to connect the phone to the TV set, a complete physical networked ICT system would exist and depend only on the software to power it.

We must now address the second key limitation of mobile phones.  Mobile phones are low power devices designed for relatively limited computational tasks.  They have limited memory, limited ability to process complex tasks, and a finite battery life.  Any attempt to extend a mobile phone’s computing remit needs to take these factors into account.

This paper’s key suggestion is that a carefully designed series of computational tasks can be accomplished by the intelligent use of preexisting mobile phone technology and dynamically loaded software modules.  It sounds complex, but it is really just about intelligent use of things that already exist, or can be easily created.

In traditional computing we think of applications as big programs that do something.  Microsoft Word is a big application that runs and allows you to create a document.  It can spell check the document, it can print the document.  It can even help you put a movie in your document.  It does a lot, but it’s big.  It uses a lot of space on your computer and it takes up a lot of memory and processing power.  Precisely because Microsoft Word has a lot of capabilities, it requires a lot of resources.

Mobile phones simply don’t have a lot of memory or processing power, and therefore they cannot run an application like Microsoft Word.  To get a mobile phone to run an application means rethinking how we make an application.  Instead of thinking about an application as a completed concept (a big tool that allow people to edit documents), we need to think of an application as lots of tiny little ‘services’ that are called to do something when they are needed.  When the services are not needed, they just switch themselves off.

If we are going to be technical about it, we would say that services need to be incrementally loaded modular components designed to accomplish certain tasks without overloading the processing or memory capacity of the mobile phone.  

Mobile phones already do this to an extent, especially in their support for lots of different types of communication.  Modern mobile phones can send email (we call this POP and SMTP support), they can access the Internet (with what is called a network stack) and they can save information to little memory cards.  Mobile phones don’t do all of these things at once.  In fact, to preserve memory, processing power and battery life, mobile phones usually do one thing at a time.  Therefore mobile phones already have a lot of services that can be called when they are needed.

We are going to extend that concept to office productivity applications.

A productivity application is actually a lot of different services that used by the person trying to be productive.  Some of these functions are critical, but most of them are what might be termed optional.  You don’t need these services to be productive, but you might want to be able to call them.  For example, you don’t need a spell checker to type a letter, but you might want to use one after you have drafted the letter.  The spell checker is a service, and we don’t need to load it into memory until you specifically say “check my spelling now.”

If you reconceptualise an application as different services you can quickly create a map of how resource usage can be minimalised.  Certain services such as drawing text (text rendering), understanding user input (keyboard driver) and outputting images to the screen (display driver) must be loaded at all times, but others services for saving documents, sending emails or checking grammar can load dynamically according to task requirements.  An example of how this works is below:

Word Processor/Email client
           |
Text and HTML render engine
Dictionary service (inactive)
Saving/sending service (inactive)
           |
Java Virtual Machine
           |
Mobile OS
Mobile SMTP/Network stack (inactive)

This looks awfully complex, but it’s not really.  

At the top of the pile there is a ‘Word Processor/Email client,’ which is a hypothetical application front-end.  That’s what the user of the mobile phone sees.  It looks like a word processor that can also send emails.  Below that there is a ‘Text and HTML render engine,’ which draws the text on the screen.  Beside this there are other things like a ‘Dictionary service’ for spell checking and a ‘Saving/sending service’ that can help the end user save or email a document.  These all run on a ‘Java Virtual Machine,’ which is an engine to run applications.  This is already on most mobile phones, and it can be understood as a really powerful way to run programs on any phone or computer.  At the bottom there is the ‘Mobile OS,’ (Operating System) which is the heart of the phone.  It controls the basic functions of the phone, and stops and starts things like the Java Virtual Machine.  The ‘Mobile OS’ works with the ‘Mobile SMTP/Network stack’ to allow communication on the Internet or through telephone calls.

Let’s reverse direction, and go through that again.

At the very bottom of the example there is a preexisting Mobile OS running a simple Java Virtual Machine (Java VM).  The mobile has a SMTP/Network stack which is inactive, but can be called by the Mobile OS when required.  This means that the network stack is consuming no resources when it’s not needed.

The Java VM is running a lightweight Text and HTML render engine.  This can render (show) text and standard compliant (X)HTML.  Given current standards, perhaps ‘UTF-8’ (text standard) support and ‘XHTML 1.0 transitional’ (web language standard) support would make the most sense.  Because resources are limited, even this render engine might benefit from being modular.  This would mean loading support for common rendering tasks into memory by default, but leaving out special sub-services that support unusual XHTML tags or the like.  The render engine could accomplish this by only loading all rendering sections when it comes across an unknown XHTML tag.

Beside the Text and HTML rendering engine there are inactive services.  These could include a dictionary service and a lightweight service for saving or sending the completed text and HTML files.  These services would be wholly inactive until called, and when called might assume temporary control of the environment (pausing the user front end) to accomplish their task without memory or processor overload.  This would have the advantage of minimising memory usage with the disadvantage of only allowing one task to be accomplished at a time.

The dictionary service is a fairly straightforward concept.  A dictionary file would exist on the mobile phone, and so would a service to take the user input (what is written on the screen) and compare it to the dictionary file.  The saving/sending service is more abstract.  This would be a service designed to save the user input from the screen (the Random Access Memory; RAM) to the main memory (like a MMC card), or to take the user input from the screen and send it as an email through the SMTP/Network stack.  

The top of the modular application framework is the application front-end.  This would be a simple window with basic menu items (used to call the other modular services), and a canvas for user input.  In most cases input would be textual (word processing, email, spreadsheet, database), but there is room for graphical input as well.  It all depends on what services are running or can be called by the application front-end.  

The application front-end would actually be pretty light, as all application ‘actions’ would actually be separate modules loaded dynamically as needed.  The text and HTML render engine and any (option) graphic rendering engines would also exist below the front-end, providing essential services to all aspects of the user interface without requiring a large overhead.

By having a well designed modular framework such as this it should be possible to give the appearance of a complete network aware office suite using the limited resources available in a mobile phone.  Best of all, because almost all services would be shared easily and openly, application development time would be dramatically reduced.  Once primary services like the text and HTML render engine existed, creating a new application would largely consist of making a front-end and linking it to the services underneath.  Adding a new service (like video decoding or a random number generator) would provide new functionality for all front-ends with a minor update.

It’s all about cooperation, and sharing.  The mobile office would actually not be an application or an application suite running on a telephone.  It would be loads of little services calling each other when needed, and disappearing into the background when not required.  At least in theory this could allow for quite complex ICT tasks to be accomplished with a very modest computational device.

All we need to build are mobile phones with two ports, some simple cables, and some smart software services.  We are talking about a complete networked productivity solution.  It’s not a solution for the developed world, but in Africa, South Asia and Latin America it could make a massive difference.  New phones for the rich, recycled phones for the poor.  The devices would spread along existing channels, and supplement existing technology without requiring massive investment, training or logistics.  Existing networks would carry the signals.  Existing knowledge would empower the users.

$100 laptops are a great idea for the future, but people have mobile phones and TVs now.  With a little effort we could really make that count for something, and take another step towards closing the Digital Divide.

UK ‘Intellectual Property’ consultation process

Monday, April 17th, 2006

The UK government has called for public comment on certain copyright and patent issues.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/978/9B/gowers_callforevidence230206.pdf

The deadline for submitting your comment is the 21st of April.  I have just sent in my comment, and reproduce it below for reference:

=== Shane’s comment ==

As a fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe, an associate of the Free Software Foundation, a member of the Open Source Academy and a member of numerous Free Software development teams, I hereby wish to register my concern regarding the current review of what you term “Intellectual Property Rights.”

Firstly, the term ‘Intellectual Property’ is in itself problematic.   To quote from an article on the Free Software Foundation website: “The term "intellectual property" operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws.   Non-lawyers who hear the term "intellectual property" applied to these various laws tend to assume they are instances of a common principle, and that they function similarly.  Nothing could be further from the case.   These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues.   Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art.   Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas–a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others.   Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying; however, legislators under the influence of "intellectual property" have turned it into a scheme that provides incentives for advertising (without asking the public if we want more advertising).”  (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.xhtml)

I am uncomfortable with the use of a blanket term to cover issues that are inherently different, and I wish to have that noted.

On page 1 of your call for evidence there is also a problematic sentence.   It suggests that the state “must ensure that IP owners can enforce their rights through both technical and legal means.”  The state remit is that of legal jurisdiction.   The adoption of technological enforcement of copyright, patent or trademark claims as an extension or supplement of legal jurisdiction is an untenable one.   It is not the state’s place to enforce or sanctify technological limitations on hardware or software.   It is the state’s role to provide a legal framework for just regulation.   By allowing for the confusion of legal and technological jurisdiction, the state permits the existence of limitations on end user experiences that go far beyond the enforcement of just rights.   The most worrying example of this is termed Digital Rights Management (DRM), and falls within the remit of the call for evidence under the section entitled ‘COPYRIGHT – DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT.’

Digital Rights Management is an unfair extension of legitimate copyright terms to cover all aspects of use.   It is about restricting how and when people can use copyrighted files.  It may restrict how many times people can play something.  It may restrict people’s ability to share something.  It may restrict the method people employ to consume something.  It is about allowing companies to determine how the end user will experience the copyrighted material that the end user purchased.

Ultimately DRM means that when a person buys a copyrighted file, they don’t actually have the permission to use it.  The file containing the DRM protected information won’t necessarily work on another computer, or your mobile phone, or your PDA.  It’s a bit like selling a book designed to be read in the living room, but with a limitation preventing it being read in the bath.  Instead of finding a way to stop the end user giving illegitimate copies of a work to other people, DRM is about controlling the right to copy work for any purpose, and in the process it determines the end user consumption method and options as well.

DRM creates a completely new way of controlling how people access information and sanctions corporate control in what was previously a very private sphere.   DRM will allow the companies who create DRM, and the companies that own the content, to  control digital networks.   It is an unappealing thought, and governments will be disenfranchised along with citizens.   At best DRM is a misguided attempt to solve a legal concern through a technological arena.   At worst it is a wholly unfair attempt to control how people can access or use copyrighted material, regardless of historical precedent or fair access rights.

DRM is unnecessary.   Governments already stop people sharing copyrighted material through copyright law.   Existing copyright law is applicable to books that you can hold, and books on your computer.  It applies to music, movies and software.   There is no place nor fair justification for any extension of this law through technological limitations and controls.

On a final note, I wish to note that your call for evidence does raise valid points.   In particular, on page 2 it is suggested that while “patents provide a vital incentive for innovation, the granting of overly broad patent protection, together with restrictive or restricted licensing of IP, can impede the development of the next generation of products and reduce competition.”  This is undoubtedly true, especially in an area critical to the sustainability of the European economic sphere: software development.   The United States of America currently sanctifies broad software patents and innovation is distorted because of this.   Examples of obvious, overly broad or misguided patents abound, with perhaps the most famous being that of Amazon.com and their patent of “One-click” purchasing system.   Such a patent is obvious, and dependent only on an authentication system and a user log-in identity.  While an argument exists for the ability to patent an innovating invention, the use of standard technology to facilitate an obvious and abstract service is unacceptable.   Software patents, covering an area without tangible products and where standardised tools are used to create new applications, are an unjust for both innovators and end users.   Software should properly be covered by copyright law, not patents.   There is an excellent article on this matter on The Guardian website
(http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1510566,00.html).

Thank you for reading my thoughts on this matter.   I look forward to following this consultation processes closely.

Yours

Shane M.  Coughlan

(Detached Digital Signature enclosed with original email)