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August 30, 2002
Baseball sets next strike date
Baseball owners and players agreed today that the game's next work stoppage would take place in 2006, when the four-year contract they hammered out expires. What? This is being covered as a settlement of a potential strike? Don't be fooled. This deal doesn't fix the problems with the game, any more than the past few seasons of steroid- and expansion-boosted home run records erase the memory of the 1994 strike.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Not nirvana after all?
Cory Doctorow sent me email responding to the post on Wednesday about Intel's WiFi + Firewire initiative. Apparently, the project originally had restrictive digital rights management built into it, though he hasn't looked at it recently. This is a sticky issue. I think it's fair to have some controls on licensed content (though Cory and others may disagree with me on where to draw the line). But putting those controls into the connection technology itself strikes me as a mistake. As the end-to-end argument makes clear, content-oriented functionality should go at the edges of the network whenever possible.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Down by the sea shore
I'm at my in-laws beach house for Labor Day Weekend, so expect more sporadic posting for a few days.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 28, 2002
I think it's time for a long weekend
John Judis of the New Republic weighs in favoring competition in broadband. Sorry, John, you're three years late to the party. The new consensus is the competition is the problem, not the solution. Learn to stop worrying and love the monopoly.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Not helping the cause
The RIAA Website was hacked last night (via "Scripting News"). This was a pretty boneheaded move by whomever pulled it off. The content industries want to portray themselves as the responsible parties, and the other side of the debate as criminals and cynical, greedy tech companies. The responsible people in Hollywood and the record industry distinguish between the pirates and the people who just want to enjoy their music and movies in a convenient, affordable way. Similarly, the responsible oppoonents of stronger intellectual property protection distinguish between legitimate business interests and inflammatory rhetoric.
Unfortunately, legislatures aren't good at making such fine distinctions. They live for the sweeping gesture and the calculated back-room compromise that enables it. Hacking the RIAA site just strengthens the hands of those who would tar one side of the debate as pirates and their accomplices. It makes it easier for them to go to Congress and demand aggressive legislation to combat the anti-copyright scourge, including the ability to fight fire with fire (the Berman bill). The hackers probably had a good laught, but this is no laughing matter.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Home networking nirvana?
Intel is apparently spearheading a cross-industry effort to allow WiFi to interoperate with Firewire (that's IEEE 802.11 and 1394, for the numerically inclined), using Microsoft's Universal Plug and Play technology. Incompatibility between the standards pushed by the computer industry and the consumer electronics industry has been a big barrier to home networking since I first started writing about it in 1998. This effort could be good news for the emergence of powerful home media servers.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Allow myself to introduce myself
Yahoo! News: Ex-Former WorldCom CFO Sullivan Indicted
You know your company doesn't want anything to do with you when you're not just the former CFO, but the ex-former CFO. Or does the double negative mean he's back on the job?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Strange (Yet Familiar) Bedfellows
Doc Searls, promoting AOTC and commenting on Verizon opposing the content industries, says, "Up until now, the only party at the table with Congress has been Hollywood: the entertianment industry. Now the telcos are moving up to that table as well. They have the money, so they'll get the seat. Now it's time for technology to move up to the same table."
I agree with the last point, but the telcos as white knights is nothing new. Six years ago, they sided with the tech industry on the mother of all Internet policy battles: the Communications Decency Act. They didn't want anyone holding them liable for what went over their networks then, and they don't want it now. And tech people feeling uneasy about partnering with the Bells is also old hat. Telco funding was a big reason for the Center for Democracy and Technology splitting off from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Geez, I'm turning into a greybeard!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Opinionated people who want to become famous
Joi Ito: "As blogs explode in the US, 2ch, the anonymous discussion site booms in Japan. I wonder if this is random or reflects a basic difference in Japanese in US culture. It is kind of cliche, but blogs are maybe better for opinionated people who want to become famous."
Yep, that's a pretty fair description of most Americans.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
We're #17!!!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Atomz search engine I've
The Atomz search engine I've been using on this site isn't working properly, so I'm experimenting with some alternatives, including FreeFind (now running on the left side of the page) and PicoSearch. Give 'em a whirl.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 27, 2002
Beyond email
"Nearly every item I've written today has been a public response to a private email", says Doc. (He also says kind things about my blog in an earlier post.) I'd call Doc's site a must-read, if I could possibly read as fast as he writes. The annoying thing is how much great stuff there is amid his torrent of content, even throw-aways like the one above.
Doc is on to the same insight as Steve Gillmor and Ray Ozzie: email has become both necessary and insufficient. In many ways, email is the perfect communications medium: quick, easy, durable, asynchronous, ubiquitous, accessible on a range of devices, and stretchable from one-to-one conversation to thousand-member discussion lists. In other ways, email stinks. It's not good for structured, ongoing relationships involving documents and other types of information, which is what Groove tries to address. Moreover, it doesn't work for material you want to post for public consumption, which is where Weblogs come in handy. And don't get me started on email client software -- it hit an evolutionary dead-end right around the time the Web came along.
I had high hopes last year for startups such as NeoMeo and Abridge that were actually trying to take email in new directions, but pretty much all of them died or got acquired.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Register
Broadband connections at speeds of 10 megabits per second could generate $500 billion per year in economic growth, according to Gartner Dataquest. Predictions like this are useful factoids to support lobbying efforts, just as overblown market projections were once de regeur for startups seeking venture funding. In both cases, though, the numbers are meaningless. Broadband isn't a product that will magically appear and magically be adopted, any more than the Internet was.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 26, 2002
RoamAD, another metro-area meshed wireless
RoamAD, another metro-area meshed wireless technology based on 802.11, looks exciting if the company can live up to its promises. Which is always a big if. (via Glenn's 802.11b/WiFi news)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The Swarming Organization
Michael Helfrich: "An even bigger hurdle is the one we faces as managers: Can we embrace human chaos with as much zeal as we embrace order?"
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Funny. I thought Gnomdex was
Funny. I thought Gnomdex was a conference about the Gnome Linux desktop. I understood why Doc was there, but not Ev. Turns out it's an event based on Chris Pirillo's Lockergnome list!
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Rafe Needleman: "Eventually the battle
Rafe Needleman: "Eventually the battle for Wi-Fi users will likely be fought between cellular carriers and wired network access providers (dial-up, DSL, and cable)." Not so fast. The cellular operators are waking up to the potential of WiFi, but they will come up short when they realize how much it wrecks their 3G spreadsheets. And the wireline carriers aren't even thinking about the WiFi hotspot business. So who else is going to win in this market? I'm not sure.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The decentralization challenge
The big businesses challenge of the next few years will be reconciling decentralization with rules. How do you make it easy for people to find and enjoy music online, without opening the floodgates of unauthorized copying? How do we build on the success of WiFi wireless systems, without causing interference with licensed communications? How do you allow your employees to communicate with Weblogs, without opening your company up to litigation?
The issue isn't open vs. closed, regulation vs. deregulation, or new economy vs. old economy. Business is decentralizing, for the same reason the Internet is: there is no alternative. The important question is what do we do next.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dan Bricklin tours the Computer
Dan Bricklin tours the Computer History Museum: "Our challenge is how to preserve the artifacts and pass on the lessons learned."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AOL as a premium cable channel
New York Times: "AOL Time Warner's executives came to a realization this summer: The only way to persuade AT&T and Comcast to distribute the cyberspace service over their cable lines was to package America Online as if it were a premium movie channel."
As Seth Schiesel observes in the article, AOL Time Warner's deal with Comcast initially benefits the cable operator, but could wind up favoring AOL if its offerings become "must-have" content like ESPN or HBO. Another way of looking at it is that AOL is making the same bet it made in the mid-90s, when it opened up its proprietary online service to the Internet. Everyone thought AOL would lose out to ISPs. However, AOL's combination of brand, critical mass, and user experience allowed it to thrive in an open market.
What if both AOL and the cable operators are wrong? Maybe the Net is more than just a new form of content, to be slotted into someone's traditional business model. Maybe, just maybe, open communication and new applications are what people really want from broadband, rather than snazzier Web programming. Maybe business arrangements and government policies will allow the real Internet to stand up. Is that too much to hope?
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What's worse than a stock
What's worse than a stock that goes from $300 to $1? A litigation-fest. Akamai, Digital Island, and Speedera are locked in a tangle of patent-infringement lawsuits. Maybe this will determine who dominates the lucrative opportunity to serve as the "Internet SS7 Network", but more likely it will bring all three companies down. It's not just the big guys who are giving in to the siren song of intellectual property law.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2002
Naqoyqatsi, the long-promised final movie
Naqoyqatsi, the long-promised final movie in Godfrey Reggio's amazing trilogy that began years ago with Koyaanisqatsi, is actually coming out. In theaters October 18, and there's a trailer on the Apple site. "There is no more nature. There is only technology." I can't wait. Now is the perfect time to step back and consider how technology is changing the fabric of the world.
(from Camworld).
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BlogStreet is a nifty Weblog
BlogStreet is a nifty Weblog "neighborhood analysis" site. Plug in a blog, and it will show others that are related, based on link structures.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Will they all go bankrupt?
I had an interesting conversation yesterday with the former CEO of a communications infrastructure software company. He doesn't see things getting better for a long time in the telecom sector, because all the major carriers are going bankrupt. "Every one of them, without exception." Eventually, he says, a new data-centric industry will rise from the ashes.
Conventional wisdom today is that the local Bell operating companies are safe, because of their monopoly control of the last mile. They aren't. Bell revenues declined 3 percent year-over-year last quarter. That may not sound bad in this economy, but you have to remember that local telephone service is normally a recession-proof business that has grown 8-10 percent annually for decades. Andy Chapman of Narad has publicly bet that one of the Bell companies will face bankruptcy by 2007. I think he's right.
My friend from the software company raises a scarier prospect, though. Creative destruction is all well and good, but where does the creative side come from in telecom if every player dies? I have one answer, and it may surprise you.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 22, 2002
Hollywood/Tech Followup
Let me be clear, in case I wasn't yesterday. Hollywood vs. the tech industry isn't a case of good and evil, it's two different visions of what's good. The tete a tete between Dave Winer and Larry Lessig about copyright and software is a perfect illustration. Intellectual property is neither absolute nor absolutely corrupting. The way to tell a reasonable person from a mistaken ideologue here is to see whether they acknowledge that everything is a complicated balancing act. That goes for both sides.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 21, 2002
The Language Barrier
News.com: "The vast potential of broadband has so far benefited nobody as clearly as it's benefited downloaders of pornography and pirates of digital content," [News Corp. President Peter] Chernin told an audience of about 200.
Herein lies the conflict between Hollywood and the technology industry in a nutshell. One sees content as the critical resource, and data networks as simply another mechanism to deliver it. The other sees connectivity as the essential factor, with movies being one of many resources that can travel along those connections. Hollywood sees a moral dimension in protecting its property and the creative works of its artists, as well as a nobility in bringing entertainment to the masses. The tech industry things bits are bits, and the only moral value that really matters is freedom.
For the Peter Chernins of the world, content is a calling, while distribution is just a business. The relevant players should sit across a table and hash out the numbers, because broadband has "vast potential" as a way to connect audiences with content. Porn and piracy, in his view, sully the medium. The tech community views things differently. From its perspective, networking is a calling, while commercial activity riding on the network is just business. We should find ways to make those businesses viable, but never at the cost of damaging the "vast potential" of broadband to tie people together innovative, disruptive ways. Go read David Weinberger's book, Small Pieces, Loosely Joined for a wonderful ellucidation of this worldview. Both sides feel moral indignation, for the simple reason that they have different moral hierarchies.
These two communities could coexist when they inhabited largely different worlds. During the Internet boom, the technologists were ascendant, so Hollywood had to play along, though its online efforts largely failed. Now, thanks to the economic crash, consolidation of the media industry, and the long-awaited rise of broadband, these strange bedfellows are finding themselves thrown together. It's not a pretty sight.
There's one company that has a chance to bridge the gap between content and computing. It's AOL Time Warner. Everyone is writing off the merger as a failure, and so far it has been. But the company could rise again if it could somehow make the compomises internally that haven't been made externally between the tech and content industries. Put Jamie Kellner, who knows how to run a profitable content business but holds the laughable view that failing to watch commercials is stealing, in the same room with the Merry Pranksters of Nullsoft, who are great at creating disruptive technology but don't have a business model. See if they can find some common ground. Do the same with the record label, the movie studio, the cable network, and the online service. Maybe we'll get somewhere.
Right now, these communities aren't speaking the same language. As far as I'm concerned, Peter Chernin is talking in Swahili. It's not that I think he's wrong, it's that I know his assumptions and definitions are completely different from my own. And as Larry Lessig rightly points out, most members of Congress speak Chernin's language.
Stewart Brand had it right. Everyone remembers that he said, "information wants to be free." In the mainstream history of dotcom mania, that got transmuted into, "information should be free, because we'll make it up on volume," which turned out to be a fallacy. But that's not the same thing, and in any event, the real story of the Internet boom is more complicated. What everyone forgets (and what Stewart will remind you of, if you bother to ask), is that there was a second half to the aphorism. "Information," he said, "also wants to be expensive." And you know what, it's true. We're still working out that conflict, almost 20 years after he made the observation. Only now the stakes are higher than ever.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 19, 2002
Joi Ito is addicted to
Joi Ito is addicted to blogging. I know the feeling.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 16, 2002
The Ricochet wireless network has
The Ricochet wireless network has been turned back on in Denver.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 1:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 15, 2002
Blog-free week
Between catching up from the trip to Aspen and several projects, I'm swamped this week. Hard to find time to blog.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 11, 2002
Is competition a good thing?
Far-ranging discussions today at the Aspen Institute conference. What's striking is how widely the basic notions of competition and deregulation in telecommunications are being questioned. There's significant interest in new models for spectrum policy, but everyone is focused on the near-term problems in the marketplace. As excited as I am about unlicensed wireless, I have to admit that its major impacts will be felt farther out in the future. It's amazing how far we've come from the optimism of 1996-2000.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2002
Get ready for a spate
Get ready for a spate of media articles about enterprise Weblogging, following on the heels of the recent media interest in blogs as journalism and the techblogger/warblogger thing.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The death of e-mail... and the birth of a new application
I don't get Steve Gillmor's point. It's too hard for recipients to filter email, so we should build pervasive identity management systems so that everyone can barter access to their email inbox? I agree with Steve that spam may cause the end of email as we know it. Heavy users will move to whitelists plus challenge mechanisms that require unfamiliar senders to go through an extra step to show they aren't spammers.
His comments on Groove, Microsoft, and the need for an "information router", on the other hand, touch upon a deep point. As I said the other day, this will be the next great business software application, alongside the word processor, spreadsheet, browser, and email/calendar/address book. Groove and Radio Userland are two examples; Traction is another interesting one I saw recently.
The issue is how to manage information without managing it. We want the right information to get to the right person at the right time, but there's usually no way to know those things ahead of time. We also want to leverage the Web, which is centralized and has links that can break and go in only one direction, while engaging in bidirectional freeform interactions like Weblogging.
(via "Scripting News")
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Things to do in Denver when you're alive
I'm sitting here in Denver International Airport, en route to Aspen, Colorado. I'm headed to the Aspen Institute's annual summer telecommunications workshop, which should be quite stimulating. This year it's focused on spectrum policy, and participants include FCC Chairman Michael Powell and NTIA head Nancy Victory, as well as execs from important telecom and tech companies.
I have a three hour layover, and I thought I'd try to go online. The terminal maps showed "Internet access kiosks" throughout the concourse, which got me excited. Turns out these are hard-wired PCs, which presumably you can rent to get online. Not now, though -- all the kiosks had signs saying "Pardon the inconvenience. Not available yet." There were also "Public Phone 2000i" payphones, the new NCR-branded AT&T phones with a screen and Internet capability. Only they don't have a data port. As with the kiosks, you can only get online through the local machine. They have an infra-red port, though I'm not sure why. For downloading information to handheld devices? At least the old Public Phone 2000's had a modem port.
I figured I'd just find a place to use my laptop, Internet or no Internet. Interestingly, it was harder to find a power outlet than to get online. The battery in my Thinkpad is dead. I thought it was just experiencing "memory", where the battery thinks it has less juice than it actually does, but now I can't even put the machine in suspend mode when it's unplugged. Like most airports, DIA has a limited supply of power outlets reachable from specific seats in the boarding gate lounges. It took ten minutes of walking around to find one of these magic seats that was available. Most of them, not surprisingly, were occupied by people with laptops. Memo to airports (and airlines, and conference organizers): Put in more power outlets! Laptops are here to stay.
Once I found an outlet, I was pleasantly surprised to find an available WiFi network. The splash screen says it's a trial, sponsored by AT&T Wireless and Nokia. Free for now, with no word on whether that will change. Cool. So here I am, blogging away.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 9, 2002
Software helps carriers add Wi-Fi to mix
Mobility demos its GPRS/WiFi roaming software with Rogers Wireless in Canada. Sprint PCS is talking up its new "3G" "wireless Internet" service, but this approach will be much closer to the real thing.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Spam update
I've added Deersoft's SpamAssassin Pro to my arsenal of spam defenses, which also includes the freeware Unix version of SpamAssassin, Brightmail, Cloudmark's SpamNet, and two layers of hand-crafted filters. The false-positive rate is still higher than I'd like, primarily due to the Unix SpamAssassin. Most of the false positives are legitimate mass commercial email that I've signed up for, but it mistakenly sweeps in about one personal message per week. When I have time I should be able to tweak those filters to be more accurate.
The good news is that I'm down to roughly five spams per day that run the gauntlet and must be deleted manually. SpamAssassin alone is catching about 250 daily. Interestingly, SpamAssassin Pro kicks out two or three spams per day that my Unix SpamAssassin lets through. Cloudmark gets another three or four.
My setup may sound like overkill, but I don't see how email would be usable without it. I'd be spending most of my day deleting spam, looking for the legitimate messages.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It's a small world after all
The tech community in Philly is pretty close-knit. Out for breakfast at a local diner this morning with a VC from Internet Capital Group, we ran into Safeguard Scientifics founder Pete Musser and the CEO of a local B2B software startup. This reminds me of the boom years at places like Bucks and Il Fornaio in Silicon Valley -- you would always see someone you knew in the industry, or a friend of a friend. When I started having that experience in New York (a much more diversified city with far greater restaurant options), I knew it was time to get out.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 8, 2002
More on the telecom emperor's clothes
"(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 8, 2002--Moody's Investors Services today reported that regional Bell operating companies, including SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC - News), are under "close study" and liable for potential credit ratings downgrades. "
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 6, 2002
Ray Ozzie: Why?As usual, Ray
Ray Ozzie: Why?
As usual, Ray nails it. I think he's dead-on that decentralized tools for collaborative work (what I provisionaly call postmodern knowledge management) will be the next great category of enterprise software applications. This piece gives some background on how he got there.
(via "Scripting News")
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Seattle Times: "Mailshell estimates that
Seattle Times: "Mailshell estimates that its filters can block 84 percent of spam, while losing three out of every 1,000 legitimate messages. To block 99 percent, prepare to lose 10 times that amount" The honesty is refreshing -- most vendors claim no false positives. But those numbers simply aren't good enough.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Japan implements mandatory IDs
Japan is giving every citizen an 11-digit personal ID number, provoking widespread protest. I'm also skeptical any such system will work, and won't lead to significant privacy violations. The good news is that we now have a real-world test case to evaluate.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:32 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Here comes the future
Tivo is providing a direct feed into the Nielsen ratings. I'm sure this will provoke all sorts of privacy concerns, but I think it's logical and inevitable. This is an example of what "intelligence at the edge of the network" means when applied to TV.
(via BoingBoing via Slashdot)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Brad Delong considers the impact
Brad Delong considers the impact of the corporate governance crisis: "But the big costs will come via a higher long-run cost of capital to investing firms as the breaking of trust in corporate reporting causes savers to shy away from whole classes of investments." Exactly. If the boom was more than a stock-market shell game (it was), the bust must be more than a stock-market pullback. Well-functioning markets require trust. As we're now finding out, that trust was widely abused.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
John Patrick: Digital IDs --
John Patrick: Digital IDs -- A Tool to Reduce Spam
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Goodbye, Chick
Chick Hearn died last night. I grew up in LA listening to Chick calling Lakers games. Heck, he'd already done every game for a decade by the time I was born. He was one of the all-time greats, not just for his durability but for the quality of his witty, intense, engaging, fast-paced game commentary.
We Angelenos were privileged to have two such giants. Over at Dodger Stadium, Vin Scully is still turning baseball into poetry after half a century at the mike. The funny thing is, LA isn't a sports town. Some five years ago, both football teams packed up and left... and no one seemed to mind much. Sure, everyone roots for a winner. And the Lakers have managed to turn themselves into an entertainment product, which LA can relate to. But LA has never had the intense identification with a team you see in places like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
Furthermore, Hearn and Scully are legends for that most un-LA of virtues: longevity. LA is a city without a history. (The closest thing it has, appropriately enough, is the movie Chinatown.) It's the first post-industrial metropolis. How we wound up with two guys who epitomized everything LA transcends, I'll never know. I'm just thankful for it.
Goodbye, Chick. This one's in the refrigerator.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 8:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 5, 2002
Interesting. Verizon is testing a
Interesting. Verizon is testing a broadband fixed wireless offering that uses wireless communications service (WCS) spectrum.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More fun WiFi statistics. The
More fun WiFi statistics. The number of analyst firms issuing wireless LAN reports is growing almost as fast as the market itself. This is a danger sign that the hype wave is about to crest.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
More confused thinking about broadband
AT&T Broadband is announcing a "high-speed" plan delivering 3 megabit per second download speeds for $83 per month, compared to 1.5 mbps (allegedly) with its existing cable modem service. Supposedly, the new plan is aimed at users "who have set up home networks, send or receive large files such as when downloading software or enjoy other bandwidth-intensive applications." Most home networks are for 2-3 computers, where a shared 1.5 mbps is quite acceptable. And software downloading is just fine at 1.5 mbps, believe me.
What power users need is faster upload speeds, but the AT&T Broadband service only does 384 kbps in that direction. Going above 1.5 mbps is important for voice, music and video applications, or if you have many users sharing a connection (for example, via a WiFi access point). But AT&T isn't thinking about those situations. Until high-speed service providers understand their customers, we won't see much innovation in broadband services.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Forbes.com: "Even as the Bells
Forbes.com: "Even as the Bells stand triumphant, the 20th-century foundations of their business have begun to fracture. The Baby Bells could one day be exposed as the last great telecom illusion...." Good to see someone in the mainstream press finally recognize that telecom's current emperors have no clothes.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Happy first Monday in August!
I love the month of August, because it's a great time to get work done. All of Europe and much of America are on vacation this month. Even those who are still in the office tend to take it easy. That means fewer distractions.
The August slowdown has been more pronounced than usual the past two years. With the end of the roaring '90s, lots of people are finally allowing themselves those vacations they postponed. There's no longer a sense that, if you work hard and get your product to market fast, you could make millions of dollars. We're back to the normal rhythm of the business cycle.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 4, 2002
Gordon Cook: " Asset based
Gordon Cook: " Asset based telecom is a devolution of the decision making process from the central telco to the telco's customers at the edge of the network. The equipment involved is generally owned more and more by the customer and not the telco which is there to render advice when asked and no longer to deliver a uniform service for which it decides the parameters and for which it bills the customer month after month."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
John Robb shares his thoughts
John Robb shares his thoughts on the future evolution of Tivo. He makes some good observations, but he doesn't go far enough. When personal video recorders reach critical mass, they will draw on more raw material than traditional TV programming. Add direct-to-PVR programming, downloadable movies, video of the grandkids, independent programs, and enhanced music content, and you start to get an idea of where things are going.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 12:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New York Times: "'Convergence may
New York Times: "'Convergence may be the most expensive word in history,' said David Geffen, the prolific entrepreneur who is co-founder of DreamWorks."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It feels like it took
It feels like it took longer to get those nine Pennsylvania coal miners out of the mine than it did for them to negotate a TV movie deal.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 3, 2002
Why Weblogs work better than discussion boards
Nick Denton: "Discussion groups are the communes of internet conversation: open, egalitarian, but prone to takeover by free-riders and tyrants. They work, but only if overseen by a scrupulously fair and eternally vigilant moderator, a rare personality type. More often they degenerate into anarchy, tyranny, and then collapse. And why does the weblog form thrive? Because individual authors take responsibility for the content and context, and benefit personally from their investment."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment
Salon's Scott Rosenberg wades into the brewing controversy about whether spam filters such as SpamAssassin go too far. Watch this topic. The spam problem continues to worsen, and increasingly ISPs and enterprises are turning to aggressive spam filters as a response. (I use SpamAssassin myself, plus three more layers of filtering.) It's almost impossible to completely eliminate false positives, though, especially with legitimate (opt-in) commercial email. Expect more discussion about whether filters are themselves a problem, and lawsuits as well.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
AT&T broadband thinks people with
AT&T broadband thinks people with WiFi access points in their homes and don't turn on encryption are liable for criminal activity by strangers who tap into the connections?!? The crime involved was downloading a movie. Maybe this is just another example of the Constitutional exemption for Hollywood. You know, the one that says the interests of the entertainment industry trump all of our society's other values? (via BoingBoing, which quotes EFF's Fred von Lohmann deconstructing AT&T's legal argument.)
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 2, 2002
Traction Software is an In-Q-Tel
Traction Software is an In-Q-Tel funded startup in Providence, RI, that claims to have the first enterprise Weblogging software.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 5:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I'm currently #8 on today's
I'm currently #8 on today's UserLand site report, all thanks to a link from Dave.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 4:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Funny coincidence. Both Doc and
Funny coincidence. Both Doc and I went to get our drivers licenses the same day.
I had to give up my New York one and get a new license in Pennsylvania. The line took over an hour and a half, while the process itself took less than 10 minutes. They even forgot to give me an eye test. The really annoying thing was that while I and my compatriots were waiting in the interminable line for new or transferred licenses, there was a line of exactly zero people for in-state license renewals, and three staff people sitting in that room doing nothing. Not the most efficient allocation of resources, guys.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 3:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I was meeting some people
I was meeting some people for drinks South of Market in San Francisco. (For those you not familiar with SF, that's ground zero for the local Internet industry.) I wanted to check my email beforehand, so I asked a friend if there was a Starbucks nearby where I could jack into the T-Mobile WiFi connection. He pointed me to the Starbucks down the block, but said he didn't think that location had an access point. I figured I'd go check. So I walked over to the Starbucks, and opened up my laptop on the sidewalk outside. Sure enough, no T-Mobile access point. But... there were four open WiFi networks in range to that location! Starbucks lost the chance to sell me an over-priced doppio, while I got my email al fresco. This being SOMA, I also had a nice conversation with a guy walking by about the merits of Thinkpads and Powerbooks, but that's another story....
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Two more meshed wireless technologies
Two more meshed wireless technologies I wasn't aware of, from a thread on the Decentralization list:
- MOTERAN from Mitsubishi (Infoworld article)
- Cowave
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 1, 2002
Digital music downloading takes a step forward
This is great news. Pressplay will allow unlimited downloads (though not burning to a CD) for $9.95 per month, or burning 10 songs per month for $17.95. That's still not perfect, but it's a pricing structure one could imagine real consumers actually going for. If I'm willing to pay up to $17.95 for a physical CD from one artist, I should be willing to pay that amount for a collection of 10 songs that I select.
I've long felt that digital downloading of music was a matter of when, not if, and that the record industry would gradually relax its excessive requirements. It just makes too much sense for everyone involved. Despite its aggressive legal posture, the music industry mostly recognizes that it will have to evolve its business in the digital era, and that it can't alienate its best customers forever. Pressplay only offers songs from Universal and Sony, and the prices are still higher than I'd like to see, but this is a good move in the right direction. Now, the question is whether the dogs will eat the dog food.
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New York Times: "Generally, the
New York Times: "Generally, the survey found that of the 1,700 sites charging for content, the 100 with the most revenue drew 97 percent of all revenue and the top 50 sites drew 85 percent of the revenue."
Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack