Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
FaceBook turns search on
USA Today reports (page 3B) that FaceBook is planning to allow search engines to index the site. This means that what people thought was not searchable may become public, depending upon the rules FaceBook sets up for crawling by the search engines. At a minimum, FaceBook will allow indexing of names and photos unless users choose to opt out.
FaceBook users are already up in arms. The opt out option requires users to do something to keep their information off search engines, and privacy advocates generally prefer opt in strategy that don't require users to remember to select a specific setting.
Knowledge Democracy:
Quality of life continues to influence relocation
This article from the New York Times (registration required, link may disappear) is an excellent discussion of how quality of life is, more and more, driving relocation decisions not just of businesses but of workers, especially younger workers.
Everywhere I go, smaller towns and communities are worried that young people are not staying and living in their communities, but at the same time, many of these communities are not making the kinds of investments that are going to attract young people. This article identifies some of the things workers looking for a better quality of life want.
Hat to Stuart Mease.
Technology News:
Let's just grow some oil
An ugly, smelly weed called jatropha may be another piece of the energy puzzle. According to a Slashdot article, the weed produces a seed that can have up to 40% oil content, which can be easily converted to a biofuel for diesel engines. Jatropha apparently grows easily, requires little water or fertilizer, and can be grown on marginal lands that would not support energy intensive crops like corn and soybeans.
Technology News:
YAWDS: Yet Another Wireless Disaster Story
Yet another muni WiFi project has foundered on the rocks of NoBusinessModel. WiFi vendors don't mind overselling the benefits of free WiFi, because their business model usually involves getting the local government to take all the risk. In some cases, local governments are putting up hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars for WiFi systems that have yet to prove themselves.
In other cases, the service provider may put up most of the equipment, but gets an exclusive franchise, meaning no competition and no service alternatives. The companies that thought free WiFi could be supported by ads are finding out that that is a tough business to be in.
Waukesha, Wisconsin can be added to the list ever growing list of cities that have had a wireless service provider pull out because there was no money in free WiFi. Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Houston have all had to pull back on wireless plans recently. St. Cloud, Florida has been trying to give away free WiFi service to residents with little success; residents have complained that the wireless system is slow and unreliable compared to fee-based copper systems (DSL and cable).
Wireless services have a place in every community. We all want our wireless devices (phones, iPhones, PDAs, etc.) to work wherever we are. But wireless by itself is an incomplete solution. With countries like Japan rapidly building out 100 megabit fiber systems, having only low speed wireless is not going to help a community's economic development future.
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Japan rolls out fiber and new applications
This article talks about Japan's investment in broadband networks, including a nationwide fiber deployment with speeds of 100 megabits. The country has a built in advantage because of its small size; short distances between telephone switches and homes means DSL can run faster over existing copper cables--at speeds higher than is possible in most parts of the U.S. But the country regards copper as obsolete and sees DSL as a stopgap measure until fiber connections are ubiquitous.
As the 100 megabit connections become more common, new applications no one ever thought of are being rolled out. One example cited is using the high speed fiber to examine tissue samples remotely. Patients not near pathologists can now get a better diagnosis because the network can transmit very high quality images quickly, enabling doctors at remote facilities to make more accurate examinations.
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Fastest Vista laptop is a Mac
In a strange twist, PC World has found that a MacBook Pro 17" laptop runs Windows Vista faster than all the other Windows laptops it has tested.
Technology News:
What the iPhone price drop really means
The 'net is abuzz with discussions about the dramatic price cuts announced yesterday by Apple. The price of the pricey iPhone was cut by $200, and Apple also introduced an new iPod, called the iPod Touch, which is an iPhone without the phone function.
Much of the discussion on the price drop has focused on some kind of marketing problem that Apple may have, and this largely negative article on CNet is a good example of the usual "Apple is in trouble" drum beating by technology writers. For some reason, an awful lot of tech writers love to predict the imminent demise of Apple, even though the company has been hugely successful for many years now.
What has not been talked about much is something that Steve Jobs mentioned briefly during the product announcement--current iPhone owners are getting new features and functions on their iPhones.
To really understand where Apple is going with the iPhone and the iPod, you have to look closely at how Apple is managing support for iPhone users. When was the last time your cellphone got a software upgrade and new features? Never, for most of us. Cellphones have been marketed as disposable; it works for both cellular providers and cellphone manufacturers. To get new features on a cellphone, customers are forced into upgrading service contracts and/or buying a new phone. Everyone wins except the user.
Apple is headed in a different direction with the iPhone. Instead of forcing customers to replace their iPhone with a new model to get new features, Apple is going to provide its iPhone customers with easy and virtually automatic software upgrades that add new features to existing phones.
Over time, this strategy will change the entire cellular industry in the U.S. so that it is better aligned with the rest of the world, where consumers can buy any phone they want and use it with any cellular provider they want. Apple is going to break the unhealthy monopoly in place in the cellular industry, and we will all be the winners.
Technology News:
San Francisco, Earthlink say WiFi failing
This article discusses the collapsing WiFi efforts in San Francisco, providing a real world data point that confirms what many of us have been saying for a long time: WiFi alone is not a complete solution for community broadband.
The deal between Earthlink and the city of San Franciso also confirms that there is no free lunch. Earthlink was going to build, own, and operate the free network on behalf of the City. The City part of the deal was to provide Earthlink with easements and access to city-owned light poles and other structures where the WiFi access points would be mounted. An Earthlink official who was asked about the effort said the project, ".... was not providing an acceptable rate of return." Earthlink's other free WiFi projects in Anaheim and Philadelphia are also struggling. The company expected to make money by selling faster wireless connections for a fee and by selling advertising provided by Google.
What we are seeing is that most people, when given a choice between mediocre wireless access and fee-based wireline services (e.g. fiber, DSL, cable), choose wireline services most of the time because the service quality is better.
Remember that this need not and should be an either/or debate: either our community does wireless or it does fiber. Communities need both, and should be planning and investing in properly structured public/private partnerships that really work. In the end, community investments in telecom infrastructure have to be linked to broader community and economic development goals. Few businesses are going to move to a community where the broadband "solution" is wireless only.
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Europe jumps into the Space Economy
The European company (EADS) that builds the Ariane rockets used for commercial satellite launches has announced it has already completed the design for a combination jet/rocket plane that will provide tourists a brief ride into space.
The innovative design will use conventional jet engines to get the spacecraft off the ground, then use a rocket engine to take it to the fringes of space for a short ride. EADS plans to charge about $267,000 for a ticket for a ninety minute ride, and expects to make money from the venture with an estimated four to five thousand customers a year by 2020.
Technology News:
High efficiency solar cells
The Energy Economy continues to churn away quietly. While oil prices bounce around like a barrel full of superballs, research in hydrogen, solar, and other alternative energy sources is setting the stage for a dramatic shift in how we obtain and store energy. The latest development involves a dramatic increase in the efficiency of solar cells--some 60% better.
This is a huge increase, and coupled with better batteries, these solar cells could make small electric cars even more attractive. For commutes of just a few miles, a car with high efficiency solar cells on its roof might be able to stay charged just from the sun collected by sitting in the company parking lot during the day. Imagine if your gasoline bill for your daily commute was suddenly zero. Imagine if several million commuters saw their gas usage go to zero.
Electric cars are cheap and easy to make, and I predict that we will see one hundred or more electric car companies spring up in the next five to seven years. Most of them will not make it, but there will be lots of deals to be made as some grow, some get bought out, and others merge.
How would you like to have a car manufacturer in your community? If all you want to build is electric cars, you could start tomorrow.
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