I recall that the first time I heard it was at MCI Mail, which would put the timing sometime in the mid-80s. It was in exactly the context I described above. An engineer was asking a product manager to get a little bit more realistic about a particular product design.

I later came up with the corollary for wireless networks. Not quite as elegant as ‘Fast Good Cheap’ but every bit as valid. A given wireless system, regardless of protocol, frequency or power, had three variables: Base station radius, airlink data rate and the battery life of the terminal. The tradeoffs forced interesting choices in network and terminal (think handset) design. If you want a network that offers users a lot of bandwidth either you’re going to have to put in a lot of base stations or the users are going to be charging their handsets a lot. If you want to deploy a network with broad coverage and decent battery life in the handsets the bandwidth available to users will be low. These sorts of decisions are still made today.

Software and hardware designers have been working on ways to mitigate these restraints for years. Engineers have put in power saving circuits that essentially ‘woke up’ the terminals for 1/15 of a second, every second, to see if the network had an incoming message or call for the terminal. Users never knew that their terminals were asleep most of the time, but they were ecstatic at the battery life. Didn’t you ever wonder why a simple pager could last a month on a single penlight battery?

Where else have you seen similar ‘Fast Good Cheap’ choices?

I’ll miss the simplicity of WebStar’s admin interface, without a doubt. And I’ve got a bit of a learning curve to climb with Apache, and with Leopard server. But from what I’ve seen so far I’m impressed by the speed. Hopefully I haven’t screwed up the realms for those who need them.

If you’re reading this it means the move was successful. Now all that’s left is to upgrade to the latest and greatest Wordpress version, then make sure my offline editor works.

Now, if you’re reading this it means the upgrade to WP worked, too. At least, we think so.

And finally, if you’re reading this, I’ve verified that the offline editor, MarsEdit, is working with it too. Now on to the next one…

To use this with your Mac and your iPhone, download and open the archive. Create a new album in iPhoto, name it something witty (like ‘DC Metro Map’) then import the JPGs into the new album. Finally, sync the album with your iPhone via iTunes.

If you have Windows, or sync your iPhone’s photos with a folder instead of iPhoto, consult the iPhone User Guide.

I originally found Khoi’s map through this post on TUAW.

[Later] Gee, that didn’t take nearly as long as I thought. Not exactly the Blackberry question, but close.

AT&T plans to market the iPhone to business users in addition to consumers but analysts aren’t recommending that enterprises supply workers with the phones.

Cingular, which was acquired by AT&T, recently decided that the iPhone will appeal to business users and the operator is now working hard to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships, said a source familiar with the company’s plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The core applications are well known: phone (including voice and SMS), ipod (including photos and videos), ‘Net (including browser and mail), plus the ‘widgets’ – Google maps, calendar, contacts, calculator, weather, notepad, camera, clock, stock. The way the iPhone’s interface is represented these applications are organized as 14 icons plus a Settings icon.

My wish list – which admittedly is not going to match everybody’s – has one main item for a remote control for other Apple devices. My personal preference would be to allow the iPhone to use its Bluetooth radio to control a presentation application – Keynote (or Powerpoint, if you insist – the same way the fabulous Salling Clicker can. And if the UI in the shipping version winds up looking like what Steve Jobs demoed a couple of weeks ago there’s even an open spot on the icon list, see? Right there in the middle right?

And if Apple won’t do it, I’ll hope that they’ll at least give Jonas Salling the API so he can add iPhone support.

That’s not to say that there is no problem with the current RFID security situation; there are plenty of issues which need to be addressed. (To my eyes those issues translate to opportunities. ) For a reasonably sane overview of some practical effects of the lack of security you should read Annalee Newitz’s article in Wired.

RIM, as you may know, has been selling BlackBerry in Hong Kong for several years. They have developed distributorships with all three major HK carriers and have launched all their latest GSM hardware there. They have also said publicly that they are developing a BlackBerry launch for the mainland in conjunction with China Mobile, one of two state owned dominant carriers, and plan to launch commercial service in May.

Earlier this month China Unicom, the other major carrier, announced a new service called “Redberry” designed to push messages to CDMA handsets. The company was blatant in its press release. “The RedBerry name extends the vivid name of BlackBerry that people are already familiar with, and it also combines the new red symbol of China Unicom.” Which gets me to the point.

China is a difficult place for Western companies to compete, quite simply because the Chinese do not bother to acknowledge patents, copyrights and trade mark registrations from outside the country. While this is not universally true enough companies have had their work stolen to make it common knowledge. The Globe and Mail put it this way:

Brand piracy remains rampant in China, despite several court rulings against illegal imitators. In December, Starbucks won a court ruling against a Shanghai coffee shop that was using a similar logo and an identical Chinese translation of the Starbucks name. It won $62,000 in damages from the Shanghai imitator, but an appeal has been filed.

Ferrero, the Italian confectioner, won a court case in January against a Chinese rival that produced copies of its Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

China can be a wonderful market for many companies, given the almost fairy-tale growth, especially in technology products. But until they start respecting outside intellectual property it will not reach its full potential.

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2006—Apple® today introduced Boot Camp, public beta software that enables Intel-based Macs to run Windows XP. Available as a download beginning today, Boot Camp allows users with a Microsoft Windows XP installation disc to install Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac®, and once installation is complete, users can restart their computer to run either Mac OS® X or Windows XP. Boot Camp will be a feature in “Leopard,” Apple’s next major release of Mac OS X, that will be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in August.