Joi Ito's Stuff

Air-H and DDI-Pocket PRIN service

In Tokyo, I use this NEC Air-H AH-N401C. It's a little CF card that fits into a PCMCIA adapter so it works in my 15" PowerBook. There are also a USB Air-H device from Fujitsu which I used on my 12". The Air-H service uses the DDI-Pocket PHS Network. The PHS network was originally a micro-cell phone technology developed at NTT. The idea was that your land line phone would use PHS inside your house as a sort of cordless phone technology, but you would be able to walk out of your house and it would work as a mobile phone. The public phones which had 64K ISDN lines would be turned into cells. This was very nifty idea in densely populated Tokyo, but in the scuffle of breaking up NTT into regional local loop carriers, wireless Docomo, the long distance business and the holding company, the technology fell through the cracks and into a niche. They could set up a wireless network, but it was not to be allowed to be an extension of land line phones. doh... oh and it should try not to compete too much with Docomo's core voice business. PHS ended up becoming the poor person's alternative to the traditional cell phone.

The niche where it ended up doing well was in was data services. The hand-offs became better, they figured out a way for you to pick up two base stations and get 128K instead of 64K. They wired up the subways and buildings. They made the drivers better so that between cells, instead of dropping the connection, it would hold you over and hand it back to you when you got back in range. I am able to get pretty decent connectivity on trains and on highways and can travel hours sometimes without losing my connection.

I used to use NTT's P-in network, but I switched to DD-Pocket because they have better coverage. The competition has helped both the pricing and the coverage I think. Both networks have a Internet service so you can get (almost) flat fee Internet connectivity.

It costs 4950 JPY / month for the heavy user plan. This gives you 25 hours free and 10 JPY / min over 25 hours / month for the IP connectivity and 5 JPY / min with a cap of 1500 / month for the data connection. So if you use it for 25 hours, that's something like 12,450 / month. Today's exchange rate is 106.18 JPY / USD so that's like 117.25 USD / month. So that's about the price of a nice musk mellon. How much would a similar plan be in the US and Europe? Hmm...

I'm not going to explain all of the different Japanese networks in this entry, but we don't have GSM in Japan and instead we have a bunch of proprietary networks except for CDMA, which is an international standard.

Zip-Linq USB chargers

From my favorite gadget site, MobileWhack:

Just as Bluetooth is finally coming into its own as dongle-replacement (USB-replacement in particular), I've been coming to see USB as Bluetooth with power-replacement, suffering only from a mild but tolerable bit of tethering.

For a few months now I've been carrying a lighter load, a fist-full of Zip-Linq cables rather than lugging all the heavy charging bricks for mycellphones, PDAs, Firewire drives, and other assorted gadgets. There are both the additioonal dimensions and weight to consider -- and when you tote as many gizmos as I've come to, these count in large amounts. While of course there are various brands of these dongles, the Zip-Linq is retractable, taking up only 3 inches or so in a cargo-pants- or laptop bag pocket.

I have always been a big Zip-Linq fan, but I hadn't gotten into the chargers. When I saw Rael whip this little guys out, I was instantly in love. I just ordered them and am waiting for them to arrive.

insTand

I saw Jerry Michalski with one of these at a conference and I got the URL from him and ordered it on the spot. I had it delivered to the next hotel along my travel path and at the next conference, I was prepared. It's an amazing little device. It is a little stand that folds up into a pretty light weight package that I now tote with me across the ocean. It allows you to adjust height and angle and lets you use your notebook PC in the most comfortable position even if you end up with a crappy seat at a conference. A MUST HAVE for hardcore conference bloggers.