This is very exciting news. While Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android OS have been fiercly battling for the top-dog spot in the mobile OS market, Intel and Maemo have struggled to be noticed at all. Which is kind of sad, because I consider both of these platforms superior to the two major players (Nicolas already described some of Maemo 5.0′s features on the N900).

With this merger, these two currently minor players promise to become a serious competitor instead of fighting for scraps left over by Apple or Google. After all, Nokia is still the largest manufacturer of mobile handsets – it owns almost 40% of the smartphones market vs 17% for Apple according to Gartner – , and anybody watching the Linux crowd is no doubt aware of  Intel’s  immense contributions to the Linux kernel in the past few years.

I just hope they release a usable SDK to application developers A.S.A.P.  I wouldn’t want MeeGo to suffer the same fate as Maemo did:  a superior platform alone won’t sell many phones if only a handful of apps (~ 164 at the time of this writing) are available for it. This shouldn’t be too much of a problem though. Unlike Android, which has a custom Java-based virtual machine for running applications, both Moblin and Maemo currently use toolkits already well-known within the open-source community, GTK and QT (MeeGo will only support QT, however). The learning curve for new developers shouldn’t be that high.

Let’s just pray that Nokia and Intel will expedite this merger so that we won’t have to wait too long for the first handsets. Nokia had Maemo 6.0 planned for 2010-11, but I think it is safe to assume 6.0 will be dropped in favor of MeeGo.  Early 2011 would be great, but  I guess I won’t get around buying a Nexus One until then…

Who has never been discouraged to purchase a 30mns Internet credit for €15 from the only local provider available at an airport lounge or at a hotel?

As for my part, I’ve experienced both situations during one of the 140 Paris-Vienna flights I took for the past two years (17,5 tonnes of CO₂ … I know… I’m so ashamed). But I’ve never been so desperate to subscribe to an additional mobile contract for 12 or 24 month and get one of those “cool” broadband Internet access USB dongles you connect to your PC or Mac and which puts the world at your finger tips while on the move…

The main reason? Those mobile broadband packages cost (between €29 and €39/month). And since I already had a very convenient mobile contract with my mobile phone provider which features, among others, unlimited download allowance*, it was not worth having to pay for exactly the same thing (500MB) under a different shaped device (a USB dongle).

To that point, I just needed to figure out a way to properly “spend” those 500MB I was given every month. Most symbian devices, such as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola, come with a software full of nice features to install on your laptop. One of those features (supposedly) allows you to connect your laptop to your mobile through a cable or a Bluetooth connection. But in most cases the result does not meet with the expectation of surfing the web at a high speed (in the best case you managed to properly configure your phone…). Surfing the web, in that case, is slow and painful.

JoikuSpot Light is a free symbian software that turns any mobile phone with a wifi connection, to a 3G WLAN HotSpot. You can thus connect your laptop or any other WLAN device to the web from anywhere using your mobile phone and enjoy 3G speed surfing!

In terms of download and upload speed, you can manage to pick at a very decent average of 850 kbps in downloads (I eventually managed to reach 1259 kbps!) and 85 kbps in uploads (peeked at 98 kbps during my speed tests on speedtest.net), which is not bad at all considering the fact that a regular home broadband Internet takes you at 2572 kbps (download) and 391 kbps (upload). So with JoikuSpot you’ll be able to listen to streaming music on Spotify, Deezer or Jiwa and enjoy from the best of youtube and dailymotion while on the move!

I’ve attached below some screen captures of the speed tests done with my laptop connected to my mobile ISP (BOUYGUES TELECOM) through the JoikuSpot mobile application and of the same test done with my laptop connected to my home Internet connection (Neuf Cegetel).

Once you’ll have this free software installed on your mobile, you won’t think twice when you’ll have to spend the week-end visiting your parents-in-law who live in a remote Internet-free location in the country… you’ll still be able, to some extend, to hide in the bathroom and make your pain public on twitter or facebook…

*which is actually not: phone service providers say “unlimited” for a 500MB download allowance… literally “unlimited”, as an adjective, means that something is not restricted or limited or seems to have no boundaries; infinite. Maybe this will be unlimited for M. Jones who only uses the Push email feature of his phone or his happy to surf the web for hours and burn his eyes on his tiny phone screen… but not for me. One more thing: Many “broadband-hungry” applications, such as “Internet Radio” will only be able to run on a wifi hotspot (mobile providers just want to make sure that you won’t be able to use more than 30MB, at most, of your 500MB).

In his study “Predicts 2009: Enterprise Infrastructures Look to Provide ‘Anywhere’ Access” Gartner analysts predict that by 2010, 90% of global wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited mobile data plans. This is mainly linked to the fact that networks are already hitting high capacity with increased customer demand, which affects the network availability and speed that users get on 3G. Data services on PCs and phones are already slowing down, and carriers cannot regularly provide the speeds that they advertise. Also, through 2010, 20% of 3G operators will be capacity-constrained, which will limit wireless network capability.

What could be best for a first post than celebrating this 50th week of telecommuting from Austria? A few days ago I was still in Paris, working from the vast open-space of the PR agency I work for. Today, I’m sitting at another desk, 1.000km away from Paris, in a small and typical Austrian village… I took my laptop with me, transferred my office line to my SkypeOut account and my home Wifi spot just allows me to stay connected to the rest of the world! Was will man mehr?

And tomorrow?

I guess this is the way most of us will work by 2015 (particularly due to the growing environmental concerns). As a matter of facts, Gartner, in its study entitled “Future Worker 2015: Extreme Individualization”, drew a very attractive portrait of what the environment of the Future Worker 2015 will look like: “long-distance travel is common, personal computers and cell phones are ubiquitous, telework is routine, and business partners are as likely to be on different continents as in different cities”.

Influencing factors

Most of the teleworking groups or associations around the world, with incisive knowledge of how teleworking is developing within their area, highlight a wide chasm between the enthusiasm of the workforce for teleworking and the degree to which management will allow them to telework. Some of the major dominant market accelerators identified by Gartner’s analysts which will influence the growth of teleworking worldwide include:

• The increasing availability of high-bandwidth access to homes in the more developed industrial nations will drive the spread of new teleworking programs and the extension of teleworking programs.
  
• Improvements in cellular data coverage and speed.
  
• Increasing pressure, in terms of national and regional legislation, for businesses to offer the option of flexible working.
• Increasing pressure from employees for flexible working options to improve their effectiveness and work-life balance. Employees will put increasing pressure on companies to work at least one day a week from home.
• Increasing environmental pressure, both globally and nationally, to reduce congestion and pollution caused by mass commutes, coupled with the inability of transportation infrastructure to keep pace with the urban population.

Limits and (internal) threats to the development of telecommuting

When I read this forecast scenario, I’m just thinking that we’re only a few steps away from making this a reality for more and more workers; all the technology tools we need are mostly available, but what is still missing is the employer/employee confidence. The reluctance of management to move from a time-based to objective-based approach, where the individual has greater freedom but also greater responsibility for achieving set objectives, is one of the major inhibitor we’re still facing. Although the objective-based system requires greater trust between the management and teleworking staff, it can also lead to improved productivity, as the weight of personal responsibility tends to focus the mind on work.

Some potential market inhibitors to teleworking worldwide include:

• The patchy availability of broadband access as a faster and more flexible alternative to traditional dial-up remote access, which, though not a universal inhibitor, will be an issue for those teleworkers that expect to operate complex applications at network speeds while working from home.
  
• The inability of national and international carriers to finance the upgrade of existing communications infrastructure to a level that will realistically support teleworking.
• The lack of available corporate budget for remote access equipment and support.
• A lack of commitment from national governments and wider regional organizations to improve the working conditions of employees and to tackle issues of pollution and congestion. As there is nothing as enticing to businesses as a government-funded or subsidized scheme, the lack of such incentives encourages reluctant managers to shelve teleworking initiatives and ignore the petitions of their staff.

In September and October 2008, an outline survey of 757 individuals was carried out for Gartner regarding the presence of a remote workforce and the provision of communications solutions to remote workers. A total of 124 respondents (16.1%) reported there are no remote workers whatsoever in their organizations. The reasons for this vary (see Figure 3), but the main ones are a lack of business requirement and the need to do business face-to-face.

Many barriers continue to impede the growth of the remote workforce (see Figure 6). Only 11% of the respondents claimed that nothing prevents them from extending this mode of work to more staff. The belief that technology cannot yet replace face-to-face collaboration is now the most important driver, up from 22% last year to 33%. This clearly signals that the benefits of rich-media communications (particularly video and collaboration tools) are not yet seen as sufficient to allow staff to achieve the same level of interaction remotely as they can in person. Technology vendors therefore have work to do in order to improve perceptions in this area.

Results

As for client satisfaction, 2008 and 2007 have probably been the best two years achieved with my clients’ accounts in our long lasting collaborations. Relate it or not to the fact that I’m teleworking, results are here. And the best of it: when I’m back to the hectic ambiance of Paris, I just feel I’ve taken a week holiday There’s no better “break” than two days of telecommuting.

For those of you who want to know more about teleworking and who can read French, Cyril SLUCKI published a very interesting eBook entitled Telework: the keys to success, available for free at

http://www.accessoweb.com/-info-Teletravail-les-clefs-de-la-reussite-eBook-gratuit-_a4500.html

And just to conclude, for the moment, on this subject, I will quote Jean Cocteau who wrote in Le Potomak : « Il n’y a pas de précurseurs ; il n’existe que des retardataires » (“there are no precursors; but only latecomers”).

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