第一看到这个标题，以为是愚人节提前来了。接着是漫天遍野的新闻，才知道是狼来了。
谷歌说，因为不满中国政府的监察，要撤离中国。好一个一言不合一拍两散。如果不满意，早点为啥不反抗？配合美国政府的声明，把商业的行为上升到政治的高度来。 很有作秀的嫌疑。
谷歌对中国还是很有幻想的。结果仅仅是捧红了李开复，外加注册了个文雅的中文名。业务上，一直被百度压了一头，完全不像网络界的老大。这点跟背后的美国政府的处境倒是有点相像。
如果说微软是一贯的商人，为了利益和市场，就算盗版横行，也愿意委屈求全；那谷歌颇有几分学生气，一贯的理想主义愤世嫉俗。
刚毕业时，觉得谷歌是个好去处。为此还结交了几个谷歌人。现在看来，yajun当年弃谷歌offer，而去msra真是明智之举。
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
互联网的青春期
如果把互联网比作人，那它到底几岁了？
其实互联网的成长历程与普通人的成长历程有很多相似之处。
最早的互联网，诞生于实验室，大部分为美国军方所用。很多基本的互联网核心技术和互联网协议在那个时候定型。这个可以视为互联网的胎儿期（1960～1973）——简单，不完整。
随着APPANET逐渐扩张，和电脑及网络硬件的发展，互联网开始起步。这个阶段（1974～1989）互联网处于幼年期——受制于外部（硬件）环境，需要很多照顾，但本身并没有太多功用。
接着TCP/IP协议逐渐全球化，个人电脑和操作系统普及，为互联网特制的应用程序（比如Email，Mozilla）开始应运而生。互联网进入了少年期——这个时候（1990～1999），互联网的影响范围相当的小，相对比较单纯。
当人们不再为了千年虫担心，互联网的软硬件发展都开始提速。互联网开始在更多未知的领域发挥魅力，比如网络游戏和网络商务。用户群爆发性增长。互联网开始有了自己的发展引擎（如，搜索，云计算）不再受制于PC和PC软件。互联网成为了很多人生活的一部分。——互联网的青春期，发展日新月异，想象力丰富，影响力日深，
但这个时候，许多有害的因素也开始进入了互联网，比如DoS，病毒，Social Engineering，不良信息。就好比青春期的叛逆和不受控制。
无法想象互联网的成年（更年期？）会是如何呢。
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Evolution of the Cell Phone
Benj Edwards, PC World
Sunday, October 04, 2009 05:00 PM PDT
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,173033/printable.html
From enormous, 80-pound, car-mounted beasts to tiny terminals in our back pockets, mobile phones have come a long way. What once cost thousands, weighed 2 pounds, and packed 60 minutes of battery life now costs $99, weighs 4 ounces, and packs 5 to 10 hours of battery life--and also includes a full-fledged computer, a video camera, audio/video playback, and high-speed Internet access.
How did we get from there to here? Let's take a brief tour through the history of the cell phone. The following phones don't necessarily reflect the first or best of each type, but instead represent certain phases in mobile phone evolution over the last 50 years.
SRA/Ericsson MTA (Mobile Telephone System A)
Year: 1956
In the days before cellular phone networks, the world's mobile phones lacked a unifying standard. Instead, they used varying communication methods defined on a company-by-company basis.
The 88-pound MTA phone, shown here, is typical in size and weight of early mobile phone systems from the pre-integrated-circuit era. Most were so heavy and power-hungry that they required permanent installation in a car or other vehicle. Very few people owned, used, or even encountered such devices; for example, the service for the model shown here existed in only two Swedish cities and served a mere 125 subscribers from 1956 to 1967.
Notable qualities: The first automatic mobile telephone system (it didn't require a human operator to manually connect the user to an outside phone line)
Photo: Ericsson
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
Year: 1983
Though Motorola announced the world's first handheld mobile phone--a prototype of the DynaTAC 8000X you see above--in 1973, it took ten years for the DynaTAC to reach the market. In those ten years, engineers squeezed more capability into less space, and Motorola built much-needed infrastructure--the towers necessary for cell phone service.
Upon its release in 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X became an instant cultural icon, both as a status symbol for the rich (thanks to the $3995 retail price--$8657 in 2009 dollars) and as an almost miraculous wonder-phone that a person could use anywhere. With the DynaTAC, the cell phone revolution had finally begun.
Notable qualities: Small size, light weight; the first handheld mobile phone
Photo: Motorola
Nokia Mobira Talkman
Year: 1984
Motorola's handheld DynaTAC was an amazing breakthrough, but in reality its size proved limiting due to the battery technology of the era. The DynaTAC could manage only 60 minutes of talk time in ideal conditions, while larger "luggable" phones equipped with capacious batteries--such as the Mobira Talkman, shown here--could provide many hours of continuous operation.
Notable qualities: Early luggable mobile phone; relatively long talk time
Photo: Nokia
Motorola MicroTAC
Year: 1989
After the success of the DynaTAC, Motorola followed up with the much smaller and lighter MicroTAC phone in 1989. The MicroTAC included a novel space-saving idea: Motorola engineers placed part of the phone's hardware in a hinged section that could fold inward or outward as needed, thus reducing the phone's size when it wasn't in use. The flip concept lives on in many cell phones today.
Notable qualities: First flip phone, first pocket phone; smallest and lightest cellular phone at the time of its debut
Photo: Motorola
Motorola 2900 Bag Phone
Year: 1994
When many people think of the "car phones" of the 1980s and 1990s, they picture bag phones like the Motorola 2900, shown here. The bag contained a transceiver and battery, and the user operated a much lighter corded handset. Owners could carry the bag on their shoulder, but a bag phone's general bulk mostly limited its usage to cars.
Despite the availability of smaller phones on the market, bag phones remained popular well into the late 1990s due to their long talk times and their superior range. Thanks to heftier batteries, bag phones could afford to transmit a cell signal with greater power, allowing the phone to be used farther away from a receiving tower. This was especially important in the days when cellular coverage wasn't nearly as widespread as it is now.
Notable qualities: Long talk times, plus greater battery life and signal range
Photo: Motorola
Motorola StarTAC
Year: 1996
In 1996, Motorola further shrank its line of pocket cell phones, producing the 3.1-ounce StarTAC--which immediately proved popular and influential. The StarTAC expanded on the partially collapsible design of its precursor, the MicroTAC, by allowing users to fold the phone in half when they weren't talking on it. We now call this design "clamshell," for its resemblance to the way a clam opens and closes. The StarTAC's general design was widely imitated, and a large percentage of mobile phones still use it today.
Notable qualities: First fully "clamshell" mobile phone design; smallest and lightest mobile phone at its release
Photo: Motorola
Nokia 9000i Communicator
Year: 1997
Though the Nokia 9000i wasn't the first-ever smartphone (many people give that honor to the IBM Simon), it marked the real beginning of our modern smartphone era. The 9000i truly was a pocket computer and a cell phone rolled into one, with an Intel 386-derivative CPU and 8MB of RAM. The phone's physical configuration was novel at the time: Users could open the 9000i in a horizontal clamshell fashion to reveal a wide LCD screen and a full QWERTY keyboard. When folded, it resembled an ordinary cell phone.
The 9000i could send and receive faxes, text messages, and e-mail, and it also had (extremely) limited Web access through 160-character SMS messages. And like any self-respecting smartphone, it shipped with a full complement of PDA-like organizer capabilities.
Notable qualities: First Nokia smartphone; first modern PDA/cell phone combo; mobile Internet connectivity
Photo: Nokia
Nokia 8810
Year: 1998
In the earlier years, all cellular phones shipped with external antennas that stuck out in aesthetically unpleasing ways. Nokia engineers found a way around that problem by designing a flat, plate-like antenna that could hide inside the body of a cell phone. The result was the Nokia 8810, the first true "candy bar" phone in the modern sense. This small, compact, non-clamshell design soon became standard for many Nokia handsets; you rarely see an external cell phone antenna these days.
Notable qualities: First cell phone without an external whip or stub antenna; first "candy bar" phone
Photo: Nokia
Nokia 7110
Year: 1999
Not too long ago, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was a huge deal. The mobile phone industry designed WAP to allow Web access on simple devices with limited processing power and displays, like cell phones circa 1999 to 2002. Instead of a rich graphical experience, users would see a stripped-down, typically text-only subset of the Web. Nokia was the first company to bring WAP browsing to a mobile phone with the 7110, released in 1999.
In our present age of smartphones with full-featured browsers, large screens, and beefy CPUs, WAP has quickly become a relic of the past. Web browsing has most assuredly not.
Notable qualities: World's first WAP-capable mobile phone; nifty sliding keypad cover
Photo: Nokia
RIM BlackBerry 5810
Year: 2002
The BlackBerry brand began in 1999 as a simple two-way pager, but it morphed into a line of full-fledged smartphones in 2002 with the BlackBerry 5810, the first of the series to include integrated cell phone support. Thanks to top-of-the-line mobile e-mail and text messaging (the QWERTY keyboard didn't hurt either), BlackBerry phones soon became indispensable tools for businesspeople and other professionals.
Notable qualities: First BlackBerry with an integrated voice cell phone; push e-mail support
Photo: Research in Motion
Sanyo SCP-5300
Year: 2002
Who would want a camera in their cell phone? When news of such combination devices trickled over from Japan in the early part of the decade, the idea seemed silly and excessive to some people. In 2002, Sprint and Sanyo released the first American cell phone with a built-in camera, the SCP-5300--and the public went crazy for it.
The camera phone became a bona fide cultural phenomenon, allowing the average Joe to quickly and personally share both mundane and earthshaking events with the rest of the world. Today, camera phones are so common that we don't call them "camera phones" anymore.
Notable qualities: First U.S. mobile phone with an integrated camera; color screen, clamshell camera phone design
Photo: Sanyo
T-Mobile Sidekick/Danger Hiptop
Year: 2002
At the time of its release in the United States, the T-Mobile Sidekick (also known as the Danger Hiptop) quickly became the text-messaging addict's dream machine. This innovative smartphone incorporated a novel design with a large LCD screen that rotated and flipped to reveal a generous QWERTY keyboard. The Sidekick line, with its distinctive full-reveal keyboard, persists today, having influenced many similar hide-and-reveal keyboard designs since its emergence in 2002. These clever and attractive designs helped fuel text messaging's popularity beyond the tie-and-Frappuccino BlackBerry set, extending it to the youth of the world.
Notable qualities: Large, flippable screen; relatively uncramped and full-featured QWERTY keyboard
Photo: T-Mobile
Motorola Razr V3
Year: 2004
At a time when most cell phones were starting to look the same, Motorola decided to break the status quo with the Razr V3, a slim, slab-like clamshell phone with a large screen, a stylish and flat keyboard, a built-in camera, and multimedia capabilities. Impressive technical features aside, you have to admit that the Razr simply looks cool (especially by 2004 standards), a fact that contributed significantly to its wide popularity.
Notable qualities: Stylish design, slim form, and a full set of features
Photo: Motorola
Apple iPhone
Year: 2007
Apple's ability to rock our world through nifty gadgets should not be underestimated. Between the Apple II, the Macintosh, and the iPod, Apple is responsible for more trend-setting consumer technology than most companies. In the same vein, the iPhone goes far beyond being just a mobile telephone: It's a powerful pocket computer, a game machine, and a multimedia-playback device. Better yet, it gives you instant, high-speed access to the Web, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, wherever you can find mobile phone coverage. In short, it's a revolutionary device, and other companies are already coming up with imitators.
Notable qualities: Everything--but particularly the excellent software, the large and sharp screen, the multitouch interface, visual voicemail, the App Store... (Need I say more?)
Photo: Apple
Sunday, October 04, 2009 05:00 PM PDT
http://www.pcworld.com/printable/article/id,173033/printable.html
From enormous, 80-pound, car-mounted beasts to tiny terminals in our back pockets, mobile phones have come a long way. What once cost thousands, weighed 2 pounds, and packed 60 minutes of battery life now costs $99, weighs 4 ounces, and packs 5 to 10 hours of battery life--and also includes a full-fledged computer, a video camera, audio/video playback, and high-speed Internet access.
How did we get from there to here? Let's take a brief tour through the history of the cell phone. The following phones don't necessarily reflect the first or best of each type, but instead represent certain phases in mobile phone evolution over the last 50 years.
SRA/Ericsson MTA (Mobile Telephone System A)
Year: 1956
In the days before cellular phone networks, the world's mobile phones lacked a unifying standard. Instead, they used varying communication methods defined on a company-by-company basis.
The 88-pound MTA phone, shown here, is typical in size and weight of early mobile phone systems from the pre-integrated-circuit era. Most were so heavy and power-hungry that they required permanent installation in a car or other vehicle. Very few people owned, used, or even encountered such devices; for example, the service for the model shown here existed in only two Swedish cities and served a mere 125 subscribers from 1956 to 1967.
Notable qualities: The first automatic mobile telephone system (it didn't require a human operator to manually connect the user to an outside phone line)
Photo: Ericsson
Motorola DynaTAC 8000X
Year: 1983
Though Motorola announced the world's first handheld mobile phone--a prototype of the DynaTAC 8000X you see above--in 1973, it took ten years for the DynaTAC to reach the market. In those ten years, engineers squeezed more capability into less space, and Motorola built much-needed infrastructure--the towers necessary for cell phone service.
Upon its release in 1983, the DynaTAC 8000X became an instant cultural icon, both as a status symbol for the rich (thanks to the $3995 retail price--$8657 in 2009 dollars) and as an almost miraculous wonder-phone that a person could use anywhere. With the DynaTAC, the cell phone revolution had finally begun.
Notable qualities: Small size, light weight; the first handheld mobile phone
Photo: Motorola
Nokia Mobira Talkman
Year: 1984
Motorola's handheld DynaTAC was an amazing breakthrough, but in reality its size proved limiting due to the battery technology of the era. The DynaTAC could manage only 60 minutes of talk time in ideal conditions, while larger "luggable" phones equipped with capacious batteries--such as the Mobira Talkman, shown here--could provide many hours of continuous operation.
Notable qualities: Early luggable mobile phone; relatively long talk time
Photo: Nokia
Motorola MicroTAC
Year: 1989
After the success of the DynaTAC, Motorola followed up with the much smaller and lighter MicroTAC phone in 1989. The MicroTAC included a novel space-saving idea: Motorola engineers placed part of the phone's hardware in a hinged section that could fold inward or outward as needed, thus reducing the phone's size when it wasn't in use. The flip concept lives on in many cell phones today.
Notable qualities: First flip phone, first pocket phone; smallest and lightest cellular phone at the time of its debut
Photo: Motorola
Motorola 2900 Bag Phone
Year: 1994
When many people think of the "car phones" of the 1980s and 1990s, they picture bag phones like the Motorola 2900, shown here. The bag contained a transceiver and battery, and the user operated a much lighter corded handset. Owners could carry the bag on their shoulder, but a bag phone's general bulk mostly limited its usage to cars.
Despite the availability of smaller phones on the market, bag phones remained popular well into the late 1990s due to their long talk times and their superior range. Thanks to heftier batteries, bag phones could afford to transmit a cell signal with greater power, allowing the phone to be used farther away from a receiving tower. This was especially important in the days when cellular coverage wasn't nearly as widespread as it is now.
Notable qualities: Long talk times, plus greater battery life and signal range
Photo: Motorola
Motorola StarTAC
Year: 1996
In 1996, Motorola further shrank its line of pocket cell phones, producing the 3.1-ounce StarTAC--which immediately proved popular and influential. The StarTAC expanded on the partially collapsible design of its precursor, the MicroTAC, by allowing users to fold the phone in half when they weren't talking on it. We now call this design "clamshell," for its resemblance to the way a clam opens and closes. The StarTAC's general design was widely imitated, and a large percentage of mobile phones still use it today.
Notable qualities: First fully "clamshell" mobile phone design; smallest and lightest mobile phone at its release
Photo: Motorola
Nokia 9000i Communicator
Year: 1997
Though the Nokia 9000i wasn't the first-ever smartphone (many people give that honor to the IBM Simon), it marked the real beginning of our modern smartphone era. The 9000i truly was a pocket computer and a cell phone rolled into one, with an Intel 386-derivative CPU and 8MB of RAM. The phone's physical configuration was novel at the time: Users could open the 9000i in a horizontal clamshell fashion to reveal a wide LCD screen and a full QWERTY keyboard. When folded, it resembled an ordinary cell phone.
The 9000i could send and receive faxes, text messages, and e-mail, and it also had (extremely) limited Web access through 160-character SMS messages. And like any self-respecting smartphone, it shipped with a full complement of PDA-like organizer capabilities.
Notable qualities: First Nokia smartphone; first modern PDA/cell phone combo; mobile Internet connectivity
Photo: Nokia
Nokia 8810
Year: 1998
In the earlier years, all cellular phones shipped with external antennas that stuck out in aesthetically unpleasing ways. Nokia engineers found a way around that problem by designing a flat, plate-like antenna that could hide inside the body of a cell phone. The result was the Nokia 8810, the first true "candy bar" phone in the modern sense. This small, compact, non-clamshell design soon became standard for many Nokia handsets; you rarely see an external cell phone antenna these days.
Notable qualities: First cell phone without an external whip or stub antenna; first "candy bar" phone
Photo: Nokia
Nokia 7110
Year: 1999
Not too long ago, WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) was a huge deal. The mobile phone industry designed WAP to allow Web access on simple devices with limited processing power and displays, like cell phones circa 1999 to 2002. Instead of a rich graphical experience, users would see a stripped-down, typically text-only subset of the Web. Nokia was the first company to bring WAP browsing to a mobile phone with the 7110, released in 1999.
In our present age of smartphones with full-featured browsers, large screens, and beefy CPUs, WAP has quickly become a relic of the past. Web browsing has most assuredly not.
Notable qualities: World's first WAP-capable mobile phone; nifty sliding keypad cover
Photo: Nokia
RIM BlackBerry 5810
Year: 2002
The BlackBerry brand began in 1999 as a simple two-way pager, but it morphed into a line of full-fledged smartphones in 2002 with the BlackBerry 5810, the first of the series to include integrated cell phone support. Thanks to top-of-the-line mobile e-mail and text messaging (the QWERTY keyboard didn't hurt either), BlackBerry phones soon became indispensable tools for businesspeople and other professionals.
Notable qualities: First BlackBerry with an integrated voice cell phone; push e-mail support
Photo: Research in Motion
Sanyo SCP-5300
Year: 2002
Who would want a camera in their cell phone? When news of such combination devices trickled over from Japan in the early part of the decade, the idea seemed silly and excessive to some people. In 2002, Sprint and Sanyo released the first American cell phone with a built-in camera, the SCP-5300--and the public went crazy for it.
The camera phone became a bona fide cultural phenomenon, allowing the average Joe to quickly and personally share both mundane and earthshaking events with the rest of the world. Today, camera phones are so common that we don't call them "camera phones" anymore.
Notable qualities: First U.S. mobile phone with an integrated camera; color screen, clamshell camera phone design
Photo: Sanyo
T-Mobile Sidekick/Danger Hiptop
Year: 2002
At the time of its release in the United States, the T-Mobile Sidekick (also known as the Danger Hiptop) quickly became the text-messaging addict's dream machine. This innovative smartphone incorporated a novel design with a large LCD screen that rotated and flipped to reveal a generous QWERTY keyboard. The Sidekick line, with its distinctive full-reveal keyboard, persists today, having influenced many similar hide-and-reveal keyboard designs since its emergence in 2002. These clever and attractive designs helped fuel text messaging's popularity beyond the tie-and-Frappuccino BlackBerry set, extending it to the youth of the world.
Notable qualities: Large, flippable screen; relatively uncramped and full-featured QWERTY keyboard
Photo: T-Mobile
Motorola Razr V3
Year: 2004
At a time when most cell phones were starting to look the same, Motorola decided to break the status quo with the Razr V3, a slim, slab-like clamshell phone with a large screen, a stylish and flat keyboard, a built-in camera, and multimedia capabilities. Impressive technical features aside, you have to admit that the Razr simply looks cool (especially by 2004 standards), a fact that contributed significantly to its wide popularity.
Notable qualities: Stylish design, slim form, and a full set of features
Photo: Motorola
Apple iPhone
Year: 2007
Apple's ability to rock our world through nifty gadgets should not be underestimated. Between the Apple II, the Macintosh, and the iPod, Apple is responsible for more trend-setting consumer technology than most companies. In the same vein, the iPhone goes far beyond being just a mobile telephone: It's a powerful pocket computer, a game machine, and a multimedia-playback device. Better yet, it gives you instant, high-speed access to the Web, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, wherever you can find mobile phone coverage. In short, it's a revolutionary device, and other companies are already coming up with imitators.
Notable qualities: Everything--but particularly the excellent software, the large and sharp screen, the multitouch interface, visual voicemail, the App Store... (Need I say more?)
Photo: Apple
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
iPhone in 1999
On the Apple's annual product launch, Steve Jobs talked up the latest iPod Nano, which will be on 5th-generation. Back in 1999, Sony Walkman was the iPod of its day. Interestingly, some market research shows that more walkman sold in Japan than iPod in the past year. How does that possible?
One obvious reason is that music can be played on iPhone. People would rather buy iPhone or walkman instead of iPod, given that iPod is more expensive than walkman and iPod is less powerful than iPhone.
What is the iPhone of its day in 1999? There was none in reality. But I have definitely heard of such design (i.e. a phone with GPS, music player, compass, reader, touchscreen, fast network access, etc) in my college classroom. One of my classmates presented his future phone on a English-training class. That was quite impressive to think of a new kind of phone, when 2G cellphone barely got populated over the world. And ten years later, iPhone 3GS has been a hit for everybody.
From an engineer's perspective, imagine something new is not that hard; the hard part is to make it happen. That's why Apple amazes us.
From an engineer's perspective, imagine something new is not that hard; the hard part is to make it happen. That's why Apple amazes us.
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