A Brief Introduction to 4G Mobile Broadband

It feels like I’ve only just got my head round 3G (3rd generation mobile telecommunications) when suddenly 4G is here.

I haven’t a clue what it is, luckily Ruben Corbo has written a really useful guest blog post for us explaining the ins and outs.

Ruben is a technical writer for the web site Broadband Expert where you can find internet service providers in your area and compare prices on the best mobile broadband deals.

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Lately, a lot of mobile phone companies have been advertising a new 4g network. Few people seem to understand, though, what this technology is, and why it is such an asset for mobile phone usage. Technology is developing at rapid speeds these days, so to stay on the cutting edge, it’s important to know what the benefits of 4g are, and how they can work for both business and individual consumers.

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Users: imagineWiMax and LGEPR

In a nutshell, 4g mobile broadband will enable mobile phones to act as efficiently and effectively as laptop computers, while remaining wireless. This will allow mobile phone users to access the full internet as they would on a computer without any decrease in speed or dropping any data. The 4g network will be the fastest mobile broadband network to date.

The technology behind the 4g network has not been defined, although experts say it will either be WiMax or LTE. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have either done trials using LTE, or are anticipating trials in the next year. Sprint, is already unveiling the new 4g network in major cities such as Atlanta, New York and Boston. Basically, the difference in these networks has to do with how data is transferred. WiMax users a broadband network over a wireless connection. LTE, on the other hand, transfers data using IP connections. Basically, it will create an IP address for every mobile device. The big advantage to this kind of network is that it can work with preexisting architectures such as 3g whereas WiMax will force a restructuring of mobile communication networks.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Users: osde8info and The Consumerist

No matter the type of technology used, the advantage to the mobile user will be the same. Data transfer to and from the internet will become almost limitless. Users will be able to do the same things on their mobile devices that they can do on their computers at home including updating blogs and uploading videos. The current technology makes these kinds of tasks cumbersome or even expensive since it can use so much of the users data transfer minutes. With the 4g technology, users will most likely see many new broadband deals that will mean lower prices and more utility.

Mobile applications will also benefit from the 4g network. Many apps that are being created are too robust for the current 3g network. They are either slow to download and run, or are totally unusable. With 4g technology and its increased data transfer rates, these applications will be able to run to their full potential. Again, this benefit will most likely be passed on to the consumer as mobile communication companies offer better and better broadband deals consumers that will use these applications.

Companies such as Motorola and Apple are beginning to roll out devices that are capable of using the 4g network, with many communication companies anticipating using it by the end of 2011. These devices are hotly anticipated and there are many rumors as to the release date, cost and availability. One thing is certain, though, as technology moves forward and becomes bigger and faster, the consumer will find more and more broadband deals to entice them to use it for business as well as personal use.

Offline Time and Olympic Mayhem

Aaaah, the joys of summer.

I’ve just returned to work after almost 3 weeks of holiday and for a good chunk of it I had no mobile phone use or Internet connection. We were camping in France so lack of electricity and data roaming costs put an end to my online world. I have to say it’s been bliss! I didn’t even know about the England riots till a week after they happened (not something you feel sorry about missing!).

My children at l'éléphant de Nantes Machine de l'ile (Nantes, France)

One news story on remote working that I’ve spotted since my return was Transport minister Norman Baker’s proposal that people work remotely during the 2012 Olympics. He suggested that people and businesses look at technological alternatives in order to avoid the traffic chaos that is likely to take place. The full interview is available from the BBC Web site.

“It’s time to oil the creaking bike, dig out the walking boots, work out how to use the video conferencing equipment, and fire up the laptop gathering dust at the back of the cupboard.”

A Computer World article states that up to 800,000 spectators and 55,000 athletes, officials, organisers and press will be travelling to and from Olympic venues every day. On the first day of the track and field events, there will be an extra three million trips made on top of the 12 million trips on public transport. Phew! That’s an excellent reason to avoid going anywhere near London!

(Though I will be taking my family there during the olympics as we have spectator seats for handball! It doesn’t get any better than that!)

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Enjoying a French café

Event Amplifying With Adobe Connect

#iwmw11 At this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop we live streamed all the plenary talks using Adobe Connect. We were supported with our efforts by Collaborate who support enterprise wide implementations of collaboration solutions. Although I’d had a look at Adobe Connect set up before this was very much a case of learning on the job. In this post I’d like to share what we did and the lessons learnt.

Running Adobe Connect from behind the scenes

Before the Big Day

In advance of the day we set up an Adobe Connect room for the event. We decided to have one room, with one set up and to use this for all the plenaries. This meant that we would only need to pass on one url to remote attendees and they could spend all day in this virtual room. In the room there were two layouts:

• a start layout for when attendees arrived with a clock, a timetable, a chat facility suggesting people say where they were from, a screen showing a running video on how to use Adobe Connect and an IWMW slide saying “back soon”
• a main layout for talks with a video feed of the speaker, the speakers slides, a twitter stream and a chat facility.

Using preparatory mode a moderator can flick between these layouts and alter them without attendees seeing. The start layout was used until the beginning of the first plenary and then again during breaks.

We also set up a video streaming page with details on how remote attendees could enter the IWMW room. All delegates had to enter as guests and would have no microphone privileges.

On the preceding day we tested all the AV equipment and the video feed. Everything looked fine, though there was a slight issue with using a guest account on the Reading University network. It was agreed that all moderators would need a wired connection. We also made sure that responsibilities were clearly assigned and moderators were given in log ins. Rich Pitkin, one of our event amplifiers, would be responsible for the video feed. Pauline Foley from Collaborate would be responsible for recording sessions and monitoring any attendee audio or visual problems. I would be responsible for all other aspects of the set up including uploading and replicating slide movement (all slides need to be progressed manually as it is too complicated to feed in from the speaker’s PC/laptop), monitoring remote attendees chat, monitoring the layouts etc. The moderators have a private area that allows them to see all the attendees and chat amongst themselves – this was really useful when there were AV problems.

On the Big Day

On the first morning I had responsibilities for opening the event, introducing the speakers and chairing. I wanted to get as much done in advance so made every effort to get hold of speaker slides in advance. Adobe Connect allows you to open up documents in advance, it then caches them, which saves time later on. PPTs and PDF seem to work best, we didn’t have a lot of luck with key note.

Moderator view of Adobe Connect

Just before the start I changed the layout screen to the main layout. During the talks I replicated the slide movement and kept my eye on how things were looking.

Some Tips

• Have a laptop next to you that shows what the remote attendees can see. This is invaluable for checking that what you are doing is being shown correctly.
• Write a methodical list of what you need to do before the start of each session – for example each of our plenaries had a different hash tag (e.g. #p1). This needed to be changed in the Twitter search box, occasionally I forgot to do it right at the start.
• I should have hidden the chat after each talk, this would have made each session recording stand alone.
• During one of the plenaries we had a few audio issues – we should have made more effort to test the set up in each break.
• Some slides were slightly messed up during the conversion to an Adobe Connect friendly format. I probably should have checked each set before using them. Possibly converting a PPT to a PDF would have retained the formatting better.
• I had to continually refresh the Twitter search – I am still unsure if there is a way to have this done manually.
• A couple of the plenaries included live demos. Although there are ways to share your screen the moderator needs to be prepared for this so they can replicate the link clicking. If possible ask your speakers what they are planning. In the final session we actually gave up replicating what the speakers were doing and ended up removing the document box and just using the video stream.

Conclusions

We peaked at around 30 remote attendees and had over 20 at all the sessions. Aside of a few technical difficulties at the start of day 2 we managed to provide good quality streaming throughout the event. Pauline did a great job of turning around the recordings and we were able to offer these on the same day as the talks were given (see individual talks for the recordings). Overall I would thoroughly recommend Adobe Connect for any event amplification, it was slick, fully customisable and easy to use. Thumbs up all round!

The Economical way to Amplify Your Event

Last week at the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2011 I facilitated a session entitled The Economical way to Amplify Your Event with Brian Kelly.

In the session we compared two approaches. Firstly we tried out amplifying using a decent camera and delivering it through a net vibe page. The live stream recording is also available.

We also streamed the session using a phone and Bambuser.

In the session we highlighted the work carried out by the Greening Events II Project funded by JISC Greening ICT Programme. The first stage of work, carried out by ILRT based at the University of Bristol, produced the Green Event Guidelines document and the Rethinking Events report. The second stage of work has brought UKOLN in and has us creating a toolkit for event organisers.

The rest of the session built on some work I’ve already done in this area looking at tools, approaches and concerns. The slides are available from my Slideshare account and are embedded below.