Ehsan Nourbakhsh’s Blog

Almost a month ago Google changed its Google Reader product by removing one of its core features: social sharing. This feature allowed you to share items you had read in Reader with your ‘friends’ in Reader community. You could also follow them, comment on their items and so on. Since your comments and notes were only text, the communities were formed around type of ideas they embraced rather than looks. Furthermore, your semi-anonymous Reader identity made the concentration on context more emphasized. In my personal opinion, the resulting network enjoyed a much more intellectual atmosphere than other more sophisticated social networks do.

In order to promote their main socail network, Google Plus, they eliminiated Reader’s features with no provision of seemless migration. I can see this as an engineer’s assumption that new “toys” automatically attract new people. Marketing people might disagree, pointing to brand loyalty.
(more…)

In the recent years more and more wireless providers have started to provide femtocells to their customers. The customer can deploy the femtocell in any location that the coverage of normal towers are weak or absent.  Consider a product like Samsung’s Ubicell. The user can plug this femtocell in their home internet switch, and use their regular cell phone to connect to the final service provider, e.g. Sprint.

E-UTRAN architecture from 3GPP document 36.300-880

As of December 2008, 3GPP documentation for Long Term Evolution networks has started to mention Home eNB as part of the Evolved UTRAN. This move can be a significant advantage for the final users, only if service providers fully recognize the extent of service this final addition can offer. This recognition might require a careful study of 802.11a/b/g Access Points, considering the similarities of the two products. Both these products are the front end of a network to final customers. While these final points are accessible to the customers, the actual network is not controlled by them.

(more…)