Since I was a nice boy this year, Santa Claus brought me already before Christmas the new Lego Mindstorms NXT. It’s the successor of the original Mindstorms kit released several years ago and it has received a lot of praise.

It is indeed a very nice toy. In the box there are over 500 pieces, 3 engines, 4 sensors and the NXT block powered by an ARM processor to control all that. I would have preferred having an additional engine instead of the the sound sensor, which has limited use, but I can understand that one NXT block can only power that many engines. The engines have a one degree precision, and seem powerful enough for most cases.

The PC software used to program the robots is a nice surprise, simple to use and working well. Connection to the NXT block over USB or even Bluetooth worked without problems. The Bluetooth capability didn’t seem so useful at first, but in some constructions the USB socket on the NXT block gets blocked or difficult to reach, and being able to download programs wirelessly becomes very convenient. There are also applications to control your NXT from a mobile phone.

There are instructions for 4 constructions (which is nice, for my old Technic set there were generally instructions for only 2 models): Mechanically the walking robot is the most impressive. The most interesting to program is the arm that grabs coloured balls. The scorpion is a bit disappointing.

The instructions are provided in the PC software. Using a laptop over a desktop makes all this much more practical. Lego provides on their web site instructions for two additional models. Unfortunately these cannot be downloaded and have to be viewed online. It’s disappointing, especially since the user interface of the software has been designed to allow for the addition of new instructions.

The robots are programmed using some graphical programming language, where one drags and drops blocks representing the action to do. Simple and effective. For more complex programs the Lego community provides other development environments, allowing to program the robots in a C-like language.

My main problem with the kit is the ridiculous amount of free memory the NXT block has, only around 100 KB. In 2007, where memory cards with GB of memory can be had for very cheap, this is ridiculous. One gets too often the “memory full” error when downloading programs to the NXT block, which then requires to delete some existing programs.

As with the first Mindstorms generations, Internet is a great source of inspiration and help. For example the LEGO web site has a section about the Mindstorms Developer Program, where the people that were invited to beta-test the kit present some of their creations.

I have also subscribed to a few blogs about the NXT: NTXSTEP, nxtasy and Motocube.

They make a great way to know what’s happening in the Mindstorms world.

The Venice Project (TVP) is the cool new project from Niklas and Janus, Skype bosses. Apparently many journalist don’t get what it is, so I will just quote one TVP employee:

… in a nutshell TVP is “TV over the internet” - streaming video on demand from a range of “real” content providers (just like you’d find on regular broadcast TV), using a secure P2P layer to reduce bandwidth costs and thereby allow us to provide higher-quality content. No more grainy quarter-screen lo-res clips like YouTube, and as it’s all legal and above board there’s no danger of a visit from plod for watching some forbidden content.
That’s not all, though - there will be a number of community features, a plugin API to allow third parties to add their own functionality to the client, and all sorts of bells and whistles to enhance your viewing experience. And best of all it’s all free (as in beer), supported by advertising. (And don’t worry - due to the way the platform works you should only see ads that are relevant to either you as an individual or to the content you’re watching; think Google context-sensitive ads, only on TV.)

Being a Skype employee, I got an invitation to the beta, so I gave it a try and installed the application tonight.

Installation was very fast, although on my machine I had to reboot to get it starting (it’s not a requirement, seems to be something on my PC). It starts immediately in full screen mode, which is in line of its ambitions of being a “better TV”. The interface is beautiful, and quite simple. There is a channel catalogue, from which you select the channels that will appear in your personal channel list (“My channels”). Currently you have to add a channel to your channel list to watch it, it’s not possible to preview it from the channel catalogue.

The video quality is good, especially since it’s running in full screen. The real test would be to plug it to a big HDTV however. But broadband is getting faster (at least in modern countries like France and Estonia..) so HDTV quality should also come.

You can add plugins to the application, like a chat application. The synergies with Skype are quite obvious too, we can guess that a Skype plugin will come.

Not a lot of content for now, but it’s still early. They are putting the technology in place to convince content providers that their precious programs will be secure.

GigaOM also has a look at it, with screenshots. There is an interesting comment why TVP has it chances:

“Unless the stuff available on Venice is as good as what’s available via major licit and illicit sources, who cares what the picture quality is like?”
It’s easier and quicker than downloading (and isn’t going to land you in court), more convenient than watching it when the broadcasters decide you’re going to watch it, and cheaper than a TiVo. The Venice Project isn’t just about the video, either - there are already a few community-type elements in there and more are planned for the near future, and we’re going to be able to add “value” that just isn’t available from the current TV/video solutions. (If it were just about “quality video”, do you think YouTube would have become as popular as it has?)

Overall it’s working very nicely for a early beta.

They have a blog, but apparently didn’t spend too much time on it yet: you cannot leave comments and Bloglines refuses to subscribe to it.

The TVP team seems to be quite an international one, with a few French people working from Toulouse. There is even a former classmate from my engineering school ESIEE working there, Jean-Baptiste Quenot. Small world.

Update: Jaanus Kase has a review too, much more complete than mine

A few weeks ago the Danish company RTX launched the DUALphone 3088, the first model of a new category of Skype devices, which we call cordless phones. Since then Linksys has also announced the CIT300, another cordless phone. Like the Wifi phones and the Sony Mylo released earlier, they are standalone devices that allow to used Skype without a PC.

The cordless phones are very interesting devices, which could be summarized in one line: This is the type of device I would give to my mother for using Skype. They are extremely simple to setup. Power them up and plug them to a free Ethernet outlet on your router. The device will get an IP address and connect to the network. Sign-in with your Skype user name and you are good to go. Since they use the familiar and well proven DECT technologie, the wireless aspect works out-of-the box, like your traditional cordless phone, without configuration like a Wifi phone would need. It also has a nice typical DECT phone battery life.

One thing reviewers have been complaining about the first generations of Skype devices is that they don’t support chat (except the Sony Mylo). For a heavy chat user like all Skype employees are, it’s a pity, however there are very good reasons for not supporting chat yet. Cordless phones have limited screen real-estate and only a standard phone keyboard. Having a good chat user experience on such a device is very difficult (power chat users can easily have 10 or more chat windows open on their PC). But our user interaction design are working on it.

The RTX phone was offered to Bush when he visited Estonia. It’s pretty cool to have been working on a device that is presented as a symbol of Estonia.

Following the article in Les Echos, Frédéric Therin wrote a longer article about Skype for the French economic journal Challenges. Extract:

Même le manque de moyens de l’Estonie est un atout. « Nous sommes habitués à travailler avec peu de ressources , expose Ott Kaukver. Nous avons donc appris à être économes et efficaces. » Le fait de travailler sur un tout petit marché a aussi aidé les sociétés informatiques locales. « Il existe entre 10 000 et 12 000 spécialistes ici, raconte Vincent Oberlé, un ingénieur français qui travaille pour Skype depuis juillet 2005. Tout le monde sait qui sont les bons et où sont les mauvais. Il est donc facile de recruter les spécialistes compétents. Le bouche-à-oreille fonctionne à merveille. »

I haven’t been writing much lately, I must say that our little boy doesn’t leave us a lot of free time. It’s not that he is a specially difficult baby I think, but there is always something to do with him, especially since he doesn’t sleep a lot during the day.

But it is great anyway! We are having good fun with Henri. Now he’s crying less than at the beginning and has started to smile. He also reacts more to us.

While I was busy changing diapers, an important announcement for Skype and especially the embedded team I’m part of was made. Sony will sell in September the mylo, a little device with wifi, a media player for music and videos, a web browser… and most importantly Skype.

I was personally involved in this project by porting the Skype engine on the hardware and operating system Sony is using, as well as helping their engineers use our API to develop the user interface. The embedded team at Skype is working of many different projects, the mylo, the wifi phones and many more not yet announced. And we are hiring

The Skype client on that device has most of the functionalities of desktop clients. This means of course voice calls (Skype to Skype, SkypeOut, SkypeIn), but also more unusual multi-chat support. Chat was possible because of the full Qwerty keyboard and the nice screen resolution. Since there is a web browser (Opera), connection to Wifi hotspots should be possible.

There is also Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger on the mylo BUT only their chat functionality, not voice. Skype on the mylo allows voice calls too in addition to multi-chat.

Wow, what a week we just had!.. On Friday August 4th, 2006, at 7 am, our son Henri was born, and since it has been great moments of happiness. We have fallen in love at first sight with this amazingly cute little boy. It is quite difficult to find words to describe what it is to become parents.

It is different from what you would expect. Before I was confident but still not sure how we would handle it. But since I think we are doing great. First breast feeding times and diaper changing were a bit tricky, but we are learning. In fact even changing diapers changing is quite fun with this boy

The birth itself wasn’t easy for Ingrid. I have never seen with my own eyes someone suffering so much for so long (the birth took 10 hours). Ingrid was amazingly courageous and gave life to the most wonderful little thing ever. Did I say he is so cute?…

It’s wonderful to think that this boy exists only because of love between two people…

Our families are very happy too. Henri is the first grandson and grangrandson on both sides. He is a big deal!

In Estonia you can drive like an idiot in the city and put lives of children and woman in danger and you will never get fined. But park one time wrong and you will get immediately a parking ticket…

In Estonia the parking enforcement is sub-contracted to the all-powerful security company Falck. Falck security agents are present everywhere here, they feel like a second police (you see them more than the police in fact).

So parking enforcement is very efficient. Take the central market. Parking is just stupidly organized there, with half of the places that are free and the other half where you have to pay. Today we went there to grab some fruits, didn’t stay more than 5 minutes and got a ticket. Another example, my precedent apartment was in a zone of paying parking, but since I live there I had an authorization to park. One day my authorization was not visible in the car and I got a ticket. I went to the Falck office and explained the situation, but they didn’t want to hear anything, while I was perfectly honest.

Now anybody visiting Tallinn will tell you that people drive like idiots here. On Narva mnt. for example, they are speeding races in the evening. But there you never see the police. Estonian politicians should go to the end of their logic and give this also to Falck. Law would be applied by a company looking like a para-military organization, but for sure it would be more efficient.

Today my grandfather is 90 years old. This is an amazing age for someone who had to go through so many things. Like most men of his generation, he was a soldier during World War II, first in the French army then later he was forcibly conscripted into the German army - like many men from Alsace -Lorraine, they are called the “Malgré-nous” - and was sent on the Russian front. His stories from this period go beyond imagination. Better than any history class they made me understand what an horrible century this was.

Since ever he always gave me the impression of a very strong man in his head. You had to be to go trough all this without becoming crazy. He was until Latvia and experienced terrible winters. He saw his friends falling. One day, he thought “what the hell, lets desert and go the Russians”. So he starts crawling in the snow but in the middle he thinks “wait a minute, that’s not the direction of home” and he went back. In the following days, he saw the dead bodies of other men who had deserted and were shot a bullet in the head by the Russians…

Towards the end of the war, he was injured and sent back to Alsace. He should have gone back to the front, but he knew that if goes back, he wouldn’t come back. So he asked his brother to voluntarily break his arm. That require balls. But the German didn’t believe it was an accident so he had to hide during 10 months until the war was over.

Today he doesn’t have the same physical capacities as before, but he still has all his head and gives this impression of strength. Before a stroke took a lot of his physical capacities away 10 years ago, he was still working everyday outside, taking care of the cows my father has. Many other older people would have fallen in depression when from one day to another they cannot work like before anymore, but not him. He accepts it, as he did for everything.

Because of the birth of our baby being so close to the birthday we cannot be with him this year to celebrate. It’s a pity but in a few months we will have another reason to celebrate when we will go to Alsace with his first grand-grandson. I’m not sure he imagined such a day would come when he was freezing on the Russian front.

Joyeux Anniversaire pépé !

A few weeks ago I was on the radio. This time it’s the biggest daily economic newspaper in France, Les Echos, that has an article with some quotes from a long talk I had with Frédéric Therin, a French journalist who came to Tallinn for Estonia and Skype.

The article cannot be accessed for free on Les Echos web site, but here is an extract:

Cet ingénieur français, qui a travaillé pendant quatre ans chez Texas Instruments, est arrivé chez Skype le 11 juillet 2005. « Ils m’ont embauché pour mes connaissances dans les logiciels embarqués », résume-t-il. C’est sans aucun doute dans ce secteur que se joue l’avenir de l’entreprise estonienne, qui possède son siège financier au Luxembourg et son centre de marketing à Londres.