Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Half-step forward, two steps back? AOL is tying its Instant Messenger to the Short Messaging Service (SMS) used in mobile phones. This is a good move. Problem is, it is incredibly hard to use and doesn't allow the mobile to respond to messages (curtailing any actual thumbtribe-building through AIM). What AOL needs is a totally integrated IM that serves as a virtual space for groups based on digital identity, using an intelligent client to render messages on any device (two-way SMS messaging being a given) and puts it all in context for review and use later -- then it is a business tool as well as a cool consumer feature. They need what Marc talks about. [RatcliffeBlog: Business, Technology & Investing] 5:37:25 PM  comment []       Broadband wars II. If you want to get an idea about how bad the broadband future will be, you need only read this letter from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association describing how good (from their perspective) the broadband future will be. NCTA wrote this letter to the FCC to criticize a letter filed by the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators. This Coalition, which includes Microsoft and Disney, told the FCC that it needed to assure that broadband remain neutral—that carriers not be permitted to discriminate in the service they offer based on the application or content the user wants. This letter from the Coalition was great and important moment in the debate about broadband. I've been critical of Microsoft and Disney in the past, but they deserve all the credit in the world for taking up this fight. If neutrality is lost in the broadband platform, that means the end-to-end design of the internet will be lost as well. And that would profoundly weaken the potential for innovation and growth on the network. The NTCA letter confirms the worst. After arguing at first that they are providing neutral service anyway (a claim which itself is false: have you checked your TOS re: servers?), they then go on to defend their right to discriminate however they wish. And they defend it by pointing to Microsoft: If Microsoft is allowed to cut special deals with partners, why shouldn't the cable companies? The level of ignorance here is astounding. We are four years into this debate, and apparently the cable companies have yet to even understand the argument they are attacking. The difference between Microsoft bundling products at the edge of the network, and the cable companies bundling preferred service in the middle of the network, is the difference between an end-to-end network and the Ma Bell network the internet replaced. This letter confirms that the cable companies do not begin to understand the value of end-to-end neutrality. It confirms precisely the claim of the Coalition: that left to its own devices, the dominant broadband provider in America (slow and expensive though it may be) sees no reason in the world why it shouldn't corrupt the basic internet design. Robert Sachs, president of the NCTA, is an extraordinarily bright man. He is also apparently a very busy man, for there is no way he could have written the letter he signed. The NCTA should spend some more money hiring press people who have taken the time to understand the arguments they want to rebut. Meanwhile, we, broadband users of America, need to wake up to the broadband environment four years of do-nothing-ness have produced. “Open access” has been a failure in the United States (though a total success in Japan, where competition has driven prices down and service up: 100 mbs at $50 a month); the cable companies are, as we said four years ago, the single dominant provider of broadband in America. Their service is slow; it is getting more expensive; and now they claim the right to corrupt the basic design of the network they increasingly own. My last book was pessimistic: It was not pessimistic enough. [Lessig Blog] 5:23:33 PM  comment []       New Year's Eve QTVR from Times Square NYC. Happy New Year! BoingBoing readers, you're the first to see this breathtaking full-screen panorama of Times Square ringing in 2003, photographed last night by award-winning photog Jook Leung. Link Discuss (Thanks, Hans!) [Boing Boing Blog] 12:38:37 PM  comment []       Prediction: By Harold Gilchrist, Audioblog/Mobileblogging News   2003: The year of the blog prefix 2003 is prime to be the year of the blogging prefix.. 2002 had hints of it: ie. audioblog, moblog, vblog, kblog, schoolblog.  2003 will surely build on this trend. audioblog - Blog posts that include links to audio files. moblog - Blog posts created with a camera/email equiped cell phone. vblog - Blog with posts that contain video files. kblog - Knowledge Management blog. schoolblog - Blog used in conjunction with K12Education. And I'm sure in 2003 we will see some new blog types like: mobileblogging, photoblog, multiblog, autoblog, nobblog, pblog, etc. mobileblogging - Not just cell phones.  notebooks, palms, PDAs and other mobile devices. photoblog - Blog post include photo.  multiblog - Blog posts with photo, audio and video. autoblog - Blog posts created while driving. nobblog - Blog posts created with a notebook. pblog - Blog posts created with a PDA. I'm sure the new prefixes won't exactly match the above ones but I'm sure I won't be far off. Some of the prefixes will define the media types (text, audio, photo, video) that we include in our posts and others will define how/when/where we will be creating the posts (mobile(cell/data phone), PDA, notebook). And social experiments like the one Joi Ito had on New Years Eve will help us discover what we can do with this new development.  Not only will we talk about these new actions we will start to mold and develop them into social ideas that we never first imagined. 2003 will see developers using the platform of choice to enhance the blogging platform.  XP, PalmPS, CE, Linux and the emerging smart phone OSs will develop year long toward moving the development forward. 2003 in blogging will surely be interesting.  By the end of the year, blog features will not equal what we started with in 2003. 12:06:25 PM  comment []       O'Reilly Network: In-Room Chat as a Social Tool. Clay Shirky. For us, the chat served as a kind of social whiteboard. In this note, I want to detail what worked and why, what the limitations and downsides of in-room chat were, and point out possible future avenues for exploration. [Tomalak's Realm] 10:53:12 AM  comment []       80211b News 2003 predictions: The Wi-Fi Alliance fast tracks inclusion of 802.11g and possibly 802.11i into the Wi-Fi certification program to avoid consumer confusion. 802.11g equipment becomes the minimum standard by summer, even in draft form. Apple ships AirPort 3.0 by summer incorporating 802.11a and g standards. US hot spot count tops 25,000 by year's end, including 25 of the top 35 metro airports. PC Cards offer GSM and 802.11a/g roaming on a single bill from cell operators by year's end. Equipment prices continue to fall, with a $35 PC Card for 802.11g being a typical price before 2004. More extensive certified antenna options become a standard part of consumer Wi-Fi gear. Limited in-plane Wi-Fi will be approved by the FCC in combination with one or more in-flight data services. 9:04:41 AM  comment []       New Year's moblog wasn't perfect... [ Blogging about Blogging ] My sincere apologies. We had the site turn on at GMT 12/31 0000 and turn off at 1/1 0000. For some reason, we thought this would sweep around and give everyone 24 hours to post. Kind of a "Day in the Life" sort of thing. It also reflects no one on the team wanting to have the responsibility of monitoring the content of the uploads over New Years... just in case... (we should have trusted everyone more...) Anyway, I apologize to everyone who wanted to post, but couldn't. We'll do something again soon and will plan it better. Anyway, the site is back online. We'll try to figure out a better way to display the content. Maybe a slide show? Anyone interested in trying to figure out how to do that? ;-) 8:42:29 AM  comment []       First post of 2003 Listen to Webpages While Driving [Slashdot] dimitril writes "Tired of sitting in your car for hours and practically doing nothing but listening to the radio or the same CD for the fifth time? You could use those hours by reading your websites with this little project. You will love those traffic jams!" 8:33:05 AM  comment []

© Copyright 2003 Harold Gilchrist. Last update: 2/19/2003; 6:13:14 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.