This is not a blog post about how good what the latest technology is. In fact, most of us (at least the ones who are reading my blog) already are using a smart phone, iPad, 3G, etc everyday.

It is interesting to see how with current gadgets and technologies are changing the way I travel.

I set out to a 10 day trip to Singapore and Hong Kong, half of the trip is for work (attending a conference), and the second half is personal. I made a decision of NOT bringing my laptop, just my iPad and my trusty Nokia N8. I packed my chargers and adapter cables (camera connector, hdmi cable for phone). I also brought along my Canon G12, and a pair of great headphones.

My equipment list

Before departure

I took my cross pacific segment with Eva Air, which I am quite happy with the in-flight entertainment. Just before I got on the plane though, I just recalled that I should at least get some maps and tourist info on my devices. So, using my iPad, I found a few apps (they actually turned out to be pretty awful apps). On my Nokia, I downloaded a 25mb map of Singapore so I can navigate around without Internet connection, just in case.

Just arrival

Things are pretty smooth, and I checked into my hotel successfully.
The first thing I asked, is there any free Internet? The response was, yes wireless, but only in the lobby. Room broadband Internet (I.e. wired) costs $8 per day. With the iPad solution, obviously it doesn’t work. So I went out and got myself a $15 prepaid 3G phone SIM card from Starhub, a popular Singapore operator. It is a phone-based SIM, but they have an option of getting 1GB of data within 7 days, for $7. Bingo! This is exactly what I want.

During my days in Singapore

The apps I used everyday on my iPad are:

The apps I used on my Nokia N8 are:

The two device setup worked quite well, because iPad cannot really do multiple things at the same time. I am able to take notes at one hand, chat on msn on my phone,etc.

Problems

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much.

The mobile hotspot is great when I have a charger, because it drains battery quite quickly with the wifi and 3G connecting simultaneously. I typically get 500kbps or up to 1 Mbps speed on the network, so in my hotel room, I was able to watch video streams (hockey highlights), do some Skype video chat (only 1 way video because I only have an iPad 1).

There are occasions when I needed a printer, but with the screen capture function of the iPad, I was able to simply save the receipt as a photo, and present it to the registration. I noticed I got a lot of smiling nods too, for saving a tree.

I tried to download another video just before I take my low cost carrier flights to Hong Kong, but it was a bit too big (600mb video), so I decided to download the audio podcast instead. In the 4 hour flight, I am very happily entertained, with podcasts and musics, reading some book, and also, typing out this blog post on the iPad.

In Summary

With my 5 days in Singapore, I used only about 500MB of data, sent a few SMSs, and made 0 phone call. I am very happy with my trip without laptop, I am confident to say that this will be the future of travel.

For my Hong Kong segment, I got a card from Bridge, which is a Mobile data provider that allows unlimited 3G data and can use the same card to roam across several Asian cities. I am looking forward to test this out.

Related posts:

1. Startup HK, 2011
2. What Would Steve Jobs do If He Wants to Recreate the Travel Industry?
3. The State of Online Travel Industry (Part 1 of 3): The Typical Booking Experience

In tribute to my long time hero, Steve Jobs, I would like to dedicate this blog post to him.

One of the greatest feat that Steve Jobs had achieved was how he recreated the entire ecosystem for the music industry.  While there are some striking similarity between the Music industry with the Travel industry (that they are both old, distribution channel controls most power), there are of course many differences to keep in mind.  So, what would Steve Jobs do, if he was to put his mind into reinventing the travel industry?

What would Steve Jobs have done if he were to recreate the travel industry?

iPod – the End User Device

The music industry change began with the Apple iPod, the first hard-drive based mp3 player that had people asking, “Why do I need to have 6 GB, when 512 MB is enough?”  At that time, the iPod was certainly NOT the first mp3 player – in fact, Apple was quite a late player into the MP3 device manufacturer.  However, their biggest selling point, 6 GB of space, won out many of the hard core music fans who at that time would at most half filled their iPod.

This provided room to grow.

The Travel Industry:

For the travel industry, the current iOS platform (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) provides a hand held device that is very capable of performing any travel-related activities.  From travel booking, researching, to taking photos, to sharing the travel memories, these devices are used.

iTunes - the End User Experience

Along with iPod came iTunes.  It started off as a program that transfers songs from ones’ computer to the iPod.  While it was a buggy program (it still is), it does allow easy synchronization and a way to reliably transfer the contents.  With this device distribution methods ready, people are free to rip out their own CD, as well as download (em hem, Napster) music and put them onto the iPod.

The Travel Industry:

This may be the most crucial piece that is currently missing from Apple’s pipeline, if they do intend to go into travel.  In fact, back in 2010, there was a news story broke out about the iTravel patent.  While it never really made into public eyes, it was nonetheless a very interesting report.

As the app is completely designed in Apple’s hands, designers can make it very user friendly, with performance and data efficiency, as well as practicality in mind.

iTunes Store – The Distribution Channel

The biggest game changer, however, is when Steve Jobs went to each major record label, and ask them to sell their musics PER TRACK and FOR 99 cents.  Both are radical concepts.  A CD typically has 12-18 tracks of songs, and costs around $20.  On a per track cost, it does work out to be about the same price.  The music industry, used to “bundle” a bunch of songs, hit titles, non-hit songs into ONE CD.  Regardless of whether the consumer likes the song or not, he or she will have to buy the entire CD for $20.

The $.99 per track model turned this paradigm upside down.  The hit songs are sold very well, and they are typically charged $0.99.  The not-so-hit songs, however, can even charge higher, some go as high as $1.29.  This caters to “the long tail” and hard core fans of the artists, who would collect every music that has been created by the artist.  By 2010, there were more than 10 Billion tracks available on iTunes, making it the largest single music source, and forever changing not just the music industry, but also media distribution industry such as books, and video shows.

The Travel Industry:

Much like the music industry, the biggest obstacle to recreate the travel industry is to change the mindsets of the distribution channels.  While music industry was entirely consumer focused and hence the mental shift can be purely made from consumer electronics, the travel industry involved a lot more hard cost.

For example, the cost involved to create a music track can range from very little (using a laptop, microphone) to very much (state-of-the-art studio, famous artists, etc) while most of the costs are soft costs.  By contrast, the cost to provide a plane ride is at least the maintenance for the plane, the flight crew, and the fuel.  That’s why for air travel, it is difficult to control.

The opportunity for cheap deals is when the flight / hotel room is almost full, and that the few remaining seats can generate many buzz or to help extract more revenue.

While booking is still mostly done with intermediary (GDS, wholesalers, travel agents, OTAs), or referral sites (Kayak, Google Flights), suppliers are now marketing aggressively to the direct consumers.

The intermediary, at this point, can offer consumers something that direct suppliers can not – the ability to change and modify their itineraries.

Genius – The advisor

Perhaps not many people are familiar with the Genius playlist.  But it really is what a Travel Agent/Advisor do for travel planning.  Genius starts with, “what do you have on your playlist”?  and then go on to suggest songs that are similar in taste.

An experience travel agent/advisor should do just that.

I must also note, that this “advisor” role maybe the weakest of Apple’s offerings in music.  Guessing what people want is never easy, and hence companies like Google build their entire business out of this.  With the reach of reading your email (gmail offering ads), browsing behaviours (google search record will be kept if you are logged in), social interactions (google +), Google has a very good idea of what YOU WANT.

And that’s why Google Flights/Hotel, and the concept of Google Travel is a very scary but potentially lucrative piece of the puzzle.

Related posts:

1. The State of Online Travel Industry (Part 1 of 3): The Typical Booking Experience
2. How the emergence of mobile had changed my travel

RIM Playbook

Earlier this week, Research in Motion (RIM) introduced a 7″ tablet device,  the Playbook.

Here’s why I think this is a great play from RIM, inspite of  the coming wave of iPad-killer devices.

1. RIM is hitting the right market - By continuing to market to the corporate market, and its ability to synchronize with existing Blackberry devices and servers, this will win over the heart of the IT departments,  while also continue to sell Blackberries to the corporate users.

2. Look at who are using the Blackberry phones: the corporate executives, marketing, sales, and IT workers.   I talked to several front line workers installing my Internet at home – they love using  the iPad for work but IT department never would allow it, well, now they have a new device!

3. The Playbook based its system off an fairly old, but stable and proven technology developed in QNX. As an engineering student in a Canadian university (I assume American universities as well), we actually learned to use the QNX as a real-time embedded operating system, circa 2000.  It is similar to Linux, but even more simpler and easy to program with.  Although QNX is an older OS, it won the approval of my vote as being a very stable system, with true multi-tasking and very flexible platform.

Now, some of the potential problems I can foresee with the Playbook,

1. 7″ vs iPad’s 10″ – the ability to type on the iPad gave it a huge advantage vs the recent announcement of the 7″ tablets, namely Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Playbook.  There is simply no way to type properly on the 7″ device! if you hold it in vertical, it’s quite big to “thumb it” too.  RIM may be better off by introducing a  10″ tablet and hit Apple directly.

2. Battery Life – with the smaller device, the Playbook’s battery will be physically smaller than the iPad – QNX has always been an OS in a desktop environment, so I am a bit skeptical about the battery performance in the Playbook.  Nowadays, 10 hours seems to be the standard for most tablet users.

3. Diversion from the corporate market – as I have mentioned in previous posts, I really am not optimistic about RIM marketing to the consumer sectors (Torch, Pearl, etc) because they are facing competitions from the iPhone – the ultimate consumer market guru, and a crapshoot of Android-based devices.  The Playbook needs to be focused and marketed to the corporate users.  Because to the general consumers, it’s about apps, apps, and apps.  Apple and Android had too strong of a head start.

So when will we see a tablet from Nokia? (No, it’s not the  N900)

I would like to end this blog post by siting a story (true story!).  It was back in 1999, and I was a co-op student working in Motorola.  Back in the days, there were two departments in the Richmond facility. The top floor with all the shiny new equipment and big team would be the cellular team making GPRS and  EDGE and UMTS software.  The small little department that I was in support for, was supporting for the DataTAC 2-way messaging system.  There were about 20 staff left or so, and we all worried about what is there to do because it was a  ”sunset technology”.  Think about SMSs, and WAP browsing, and who would use these 2-way pagers? One of the co-workers mentioned that a small little startup in Waterloo, ON is licensing the technology to build the device on, and we were all joking about how the entire team will need to move there.  Obviously, that little startup, became what RIM is today.  And seriously, I wonder if any of the DataTAC team went to work for RIM.  But the Motorola Richmond facility was later dismissed and the entire operation has been moved to China.

The moral of  the story – technology is only one of the small factors in a business – choosing the right market to attack is the key to win.

No related posts.

I’m getting the iPad’s Camera Connection Kit shipped from the US, and should arrive next week.

In the mean time, I am very excited about what it can do! I have read online that it already can:
1. hook up a USB keyboard – I’m very excited about this feature! Since I have purchased their original dock, it would be great to type quickly in the office!
2. USB audio – both microphone and speaker would work – although I can’t imagine myself using this.
3. Videos and Photos stored in SD or USB flash drives.
4. (with jailbreaking) open any file on the SD card.

Since I was looking around, and I can’t find any other great use without hacking the iPad, I am trying to see if there are any other additional use?

Some of my suggestions (probably requires jailbreaking):

1. Creating a SD card or USB flash drive that has a directory listing of DCIM (aparently this is the directory that iPad was looking for).
2. USB webcam – somehow create image buffer in the DCIM directory?
3. 3G rocket stick
4. connecting to a printer
5. USB to TV (very likely – if the TV can see the ipad as a mass storage)
6. Hook up with external DVD/CD/hard drive (port is not powered, but need to draw from others)

If there are other suggestions, please leave me a comment!

No related posts.

This is a guide for those who wants to use the iPad as a second monitor for a windows laptop.

Here’s what I used:

• ultraVNC (uvnc.com) for PC (free)
• Mocha VNC Lite – for the iPad (free)

It’s actually very simple to do.

1. Install the ultraVNC server

2. You should see the VNC Server icon in the task bar. Right click on it.

3. Click on Admin Property, select Display No 2

I chose to Remove Aero and Wallpaper, just to make it go faster

4. Right Click on uVNC Icon again and then Properties. Select Video  Hook Driver.  Optionally select the Low Accuracy to increase speed.

5. One more setting:

In  C:\Program Files\UltraVNC, edit ultravnc.ini, to enable to secondary display:

primary=1
secondary=1

6. Make sure your laptop’s Display #2 is active, select  Extend these displays

7. Startup Mocha Lite on your iPad.  Note: IP address will be the  laptop’s address, possibly 192.168.0.x but depends on the network. You can find it out by hovering over the uVNC server icon. Port number is 5902.

You will find that when it starts up it is basically mirroring your display. However,  you can use your finger to scroll the screen – and that will display a second screen.

Next, get a stand and enjoy it as your second screen!

P.S. for those who do not have a laptop, google something called the Virtual Video Driver. I found one here.  I don’t think I’ve got it working on my Windows 7 but I later realize my laptop card can do without.

There are programs and solutions available for the Mac Users,

iDisplay:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/idisplay/id363500805?mt=8

Mocha VNC Lite + Screen Recycler:  http://marthees.com/2010/04/hacksugar-using-your-ipad-as-a-second-monitor/

No related posts.