Maybe less of an obit than a testimony to my long friend the Analog Mobile Phone System. In technology, 25 years is a reasonably long life. In 1979 I was a sprite young engineer working on the first microprocessor based 800 mHz trunking and cellular systems for Motorola. I was there when AMPS was born. I helped deliver her. It was a painful delivery. In the summer of 1979 I invented a way to identify where software glitches caused pops and clicks when you talked on radios and cellphones. Then I would debug the code. A 4 bit microprocessor called the COPS 410 followed by an 8 bit micro the 6801/6301. Most of the programming was in assembly and machine code - every nybble helped.

AMPS was enabled by the microprocessor. It provided the technological and cost reduction necessary for mass adoption. Price elasticity. Waltz me around again Matilda.

I remember contemplating starting a Cellular company with Jay Gurley, and Bill Werner. Most entrepreneurs are forced into it. Life at Mother Mo was too good. Perhaps if we would taken the leap this blog would have been posted from an island in the Caribbean (or for me a private Robot Laboratory).

I had dinner with Ed Comer the inventor of the Bellsouth system Cellemetry cellular control channel system the other night. We toasted to AMPS demise. The most successful deployment of CCC arguably was the GM On-Star system. CCC On-Star customers were disabled on Dec 31, 2007. There still are 1 million analog phones used in alarm systems. These will go dark quietly. In the famous words of the prophet Monty Python - “I’m not dead yet, it’s only a flesh wound.” Certainly some carriers will continue to support AMPS (for a short while)- but the efficiency of digital channels - economics - prevail, and, the digitization of the airwaves continues. It is fitting that during our bereavement, we are in the middle of one of the most important spectrum auctions in history - especially for M2M. The 700 MHz spectrum reclaimed from television is up for bid. No one knows who is bidding it up, but it has surpassed the financial threshold for open access - perhaps it is Google.

I never had a Betamax. But with Wal-mart’s announcement last week, Toshiba announced just a few days later that HD-DVD would be abandoned. The market speaks again.

Technology marches forward and backward compatibility is a difficult and sometimes impossible task.

A microsecond of silence for our long friend AMPS.

It is ironic that after a hiatus of 15 years, once again, I am helping rid the world of mosquitoes. In 1992, Larry Chapman worked with me at the Superconducting Supercollider. Larry, like myself, is an idea hamster, problem solver, closet inventor, and electronics geek. Red wine, outdoors, Scientific American, and Circuit Cellar are a strange mix, and the hamster started spinning around west nile, piezoelectric, and entomology. It turns out that only female mosquitoes bite. It is also true that most of the time female mosquitoes don’t prefer the company of male mosquitoes. The masses of male and female wings are different and therefore they flap at different rates. So, as the Chapman-Smith theory goes, if you can make the sound of the vibration of a male mosquito’s wings you won’t get bit. Overcomplicated the problem, d’ya think?

So, after a small production run we were ready to solve the worlds Mosquito issues. We purchased cable channel time on either side of the Final Four tourney in areas of Florida that had not sprayed for mosquitoes. Trouble was, we built devices and bought commercial time and ran out of money before we had made the commercial. So, since we couldn’t afford real cameramen, actors, or editing, I starred in the commercial.

MosquitoNix® employs a specially engineered system that automatically distributes a fine mist of a natural insecticide around the perimeter of your home, yard or other property where you need mosquito control. Ublip will be providing location based services for its fleet, and eventually tank level monitoring for proactive replenishment and maintenance.

Cellular radios and data plans have dropped in price by a factor of 5 in the past few years. ROI can now be measured in weeks. The embedded internet will continue to grow exponentially due to price elasticity. Applications like these provide a great means for both cost reduction and differentiation.

Of course sometimes you get the technology right and miss the market - “skeeter git” vs teen repellent - and sometimes you get the market right and miss the technology. Sometimes you get both and miss the timing. In the end, it is all about execution.

Market + Technology + Timing + Execution = Success.

I spend this weekend installing GPS tracking devices on equipment for a new customer of ours in the construction industry, the Jimmy Evans Company. We did the installs in their water trucks and I thought I would share some photos of the installations. Here is a photo of one of the trucks so you know the kind of vehicle I am talking about.

The device and antenna were both easily mounted in inside the dashboard on the passenger side. Here is a photo showing the where the antenna was installed.

And finally here is a photo showing the placement of the actual device.

Everything fit neatly under the relay panel cover. Unfortunately, we didn’t seem to get a photo of the dash after the cover was back in place, but everything fit neatly underneath. This installation was easy and completely discreet. It is completely up to the Jimmy Evans company whether or not to tell the drivers about the device, a decision that we generally support due to our belief in the Hawthorne Effect.

What are you selling?

I was asked that question a few nights ago. We were having dinner at an upscale place in Cabo. The guy that asked me is one of the best salesmen I have ever met. I have heard the question before at a sales seminar by Jack Daley and knew immediately where my friend was going. “Peace of mind” I said with the utmost of confidence.

According to C.S. Lewis, there never has been and never will be a radically new value or value system. “The human mind can no more invent a new value than create a new primary color.”

You had better be selling something that people value or you will fail.

Knowing where your kids are and that they are OK provides peace of mind.

Knowing where your stuff is and how it is doing provides peace of mind.

A retail notion is that all purchases are emotional and then buyers rationalize the need after the purchase.

I can’t help but relate this to a comment from the “Nanny” post. This customer is buying peace of mind. The comment from “Janis” criticizes the purchase as “keeping her on a leash”. The customer has decided that the incremental cost of a device to provide “touch points” during the day gives more peace of mind than the same money used to pay for a more secure Nanny. All purchases are emotional. I doubt an increase of $15 a month to a Nanny, would provide the same incremental “peace of mind” that the Ublip tracker provides.

I had lunch with a good friend the other day. It was her turn to buy and it made the sushi taste even better. But by far the conversation was the best part. I am not a degree bigot, but Donna Reganbaum reflects well on her Stanford undergrad and Harvard (pronounced “HAH-vahd”) MBA. She is the poster child for intellectual curiosity and lifelong learning. I always leave lunch with my head exploding AND a homework assignment. It nostalgically takes me back to office visits with Dr. Kamangar at UTA while working on myPhD.

This time, my homework was to investigate the Hawthorne effect. She was able to label something I had observed and exploited without knowing the underlying psychology. After doing my homework - I now understand the why as well as the what and when.

From Wikipedia - The Hawthorne effect describes a temporary change in behavior or performance in response to a change in environmental conditions. Others have broadened this definition to mean that people’s behavior and performance change (generally improve) following any new or increased attention.

In the 90’s I sold a bunch of firewalls to managers that needed to keep employees in check. “Surfing” during working hours reduced productivity substantially. By installing a system to track where people were going on the web while at work, peoples behavior changed.

I’d like to propose a corollary to Hawthorne. People’s behaviors change even when they only perceive that there is a change in environmental conditions - increased attention - even though it may not be the case.

Even if the manager never looked at the reports, the “Hawthorne Effect” is real.

This of course leads to all kinds of opportunities. One of the most interesting is the “Red Light” - devices. They detect people that run red lights. The most profitable provider of these systems is the one that sells many more “dummy” devices than real ones. Higher gross margin when there are no components inside.

Years ago I said that “m2m will be successful when nobody notices”. Well, that is true, but when everyone notices, m2m will provide ROI .