Cringely claims passive antennas up in the old oak tree connect his fortress of arrogance with Santa Rosa, while Flickenger politely dissents and invites Cringely to speak: Cringely's article is about using two connected, unpowered yagi antennas on a nearby mountain top to relay his Wi-Fi signal from his own high mountain aerie to a wISP in Santa Rosa. (Fortress of arrogance is a tip to Dr. Science, and is only a slight exaggeration given Cringely.) Flickenger dissents, wondering how Cringely has outsmarted (with insufficient detail) the brightest or at least hardest-working minds in rock, roll, and community Wi-Fi. Worth reading both halves of the story. Hey, Bob: let slip the secrets!

6:04:33 PM    comment   

Despite the billions of dollars spent on 2.5G and 3G, U.S. carriers are investing in WLAN technology. Sprint PCS recently invested in Boingo, a new WLAN hot-spot provider. Last fall, VoiceStream filed to buy MobileStar's assets when they went on the auction block. Carriers in Asia and Europe are also investing in WLAN hot spots. WLANs offer a cheaper, and easier to install alternative to 3G. For more, check out this recent article from the Seattle Times.
6:00:34 PM    comment   

The new system, called m-Pay, allows third-party content providers to bill for content through Vodafone's billing system. The system works through either a wireless Web connection or a WAP form. The service is limited to Vodafone's U.K. network for the time being, with service coming to the rest of Vodafone's networks at undisclosed intervals. Vodafone has approximately 50 companies lined up for the new service, including mobile portal Vizzavi.
5:59:45 PM    comment   

The Cisco Mobile Office is a service that combines wireless and wireless technology such as Virtual Private Network (VPN), wireless broadband, and remote network access to allow business users secure access to their corporate networks in public spaces such as airports, coffee shops, and restaurants. The service is an enterprise specific hot spot with enhanced corporate security. Cisco has already launched Mobile Office in Australia for ANZ's traveling workforce and in Taiwan through ISP Infoserve.
5:58:29 PM    comment   

Sun Microsystems last week joined a technology initiative to build wireless digital ID tags for retail goods. The initiative, called Auto-ID, is headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is funded by a group of retail giants including Proctor & Gamble, Gillette, Wal-Mart, Unilever, Tesco, and Target. Auto-ID seeks to develop a system of wireless ID tags that will both allow consumers to wirelessly purchase goods while enabling retail managers to track the sales of individual products. Wal-Mart is currently auditing the new system at a pilot store in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
5:57:37 PM    comment   

It seems the hype may be true as teenagers in the U.S. are starting to warm up to mobile messaging. Cingular Wireless claims that they have seen a 450 percent jump in messaging use in the last six months. For more, check out this AP article.
5:46:59 PM    comment   

Despite the launch of NTT DoCoMo's W-CDMA network in Japan, CDMA2000 appears to be winning the early race stages of the race to 3G, at least according to the analysts at BWCS. CDMA2000's current speeds of 144 Kbps put it squarely ahead of the GSM/GPRS 2.5 networks being deployed in Europe. South Korea's CDMA2000 market is taking off, with new service from SK Telecom offering staggering data speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps. The new, faster service by April will be available in 16 markets in South Korea.
5:45:43 PM    comment   

I've long been arguing that the PC is more than just a mainframe on a desktop and is the building block for all sorts of other devices. While still too expensive for most people to throw them around casually it is a hint of what is coming very soon.
2:54:25 PM    comment   

If mergers and acquisitions are so unproductive, as many studies show, why are the most successful high-tech companies the most prolific deal makers? The answer: because they have figured out how to execute strategic transactions that deliver value. Click here to learn the secrets of these companies' success.
2:50:52 PM    comment   

Verizon Wireless today announced that it would acquire certain wireless assets of Dobson Communications for approximately $465 million. The assets include parts of Dobson's wireless network in California, Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee. The deal will add approximately 950,000 new subscribers to Verizon's network. No word yet when the deal will be closed.
2:47:22 PM    comment   

Motorola and Marcomedia announced last week that they are developing a new wireless Web pad designed to allow broadband subscribers to surf the Web while watching TV. The new device, called the Motorola Evr-8401 Enhanced TV viewer, is a handheld wireless Web pad that allows users to simultaneously watch TV and surf the Web through a specialized viewer interface designed by Macromedia. The device connects wirelessly to both an internet and cable connection either through a stand-alone cable modem or through Motorola's DCT5000 family of cable set-top boxes. The companies have yet to set a release date for the new device.
2:46:05 PM    comment   

John McChesney of NPR visits Aspen and talks about Pringles cans, free networking, and Boingo [RealAudio required]: The intro said that these networks may pose a threat to existing telephone networks. McChesney interviews Jim Shelby, and gets the facts right: he notes that the technology was designed for a few hundred feet, but that Shelby (like many others) can range for miles.

1:10:50 PM    comment   

Olympics officials say Wi-Fi too insecure for widespread use until at least 2008: this demonstrates their complete lack of understanding of the difference between the mechanisms that move data (bottom two layers of the ISO networking model) and the data itself.

1:10:09 PM    comment   

This is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently.  Would it be useful to be able to subscribe to a K-Log using your favorite IM client (AIM, ICQ, or Windows Messenger)?  I think it would be.  The interface would be simple.  Just click an icon on the K-Log you want to subscribe to, and new posts turn up as messages in your chat window.  The message would also include the information necessary to start up a chat session with the author.  Authentication would be handled via buddy lists. 

This type of interaction gets really powerful when Web Services are used (this is a little advanced, but it points to how powerful a K-Log tool can become).  For those who don't know what a Web Service is, it is simply the ability to send a question (example: what is the price of IBM stock?) to a remote machine, application, or system that returns an answer (the price is 104).  Destkop K-Log tools can be simply programmed to ask that question on a periodic basis and publish the answer to the Intranet as a post to a K-Log.

I recently ran example of this on my Weblog.  It is a simple Web Service that generates a table of horse racing statistics from New Zealand (see: http://jrobb.userland.com/2002/02/08.html#a1176 ).  The service is running on Chris Double's machine (in New Zealand) and to include it in my Weblog, all I needed to do cut and paste a simple one line "macro" to the editing box (macros are snipets of code that people often use when working with a spreadsheet, etc.).  Whenever I publish my Weblog, my desktop Weblog tool asks his desktop Weblog tool what the latest statistics are.  The results are sent to me and updated on my site.

Now, it is easy to see how this could extend to corporate K-Logs.  I could easily include macros that would ask the corporate sales system (via Web Services) to send me all new sales over $5,000 (the data returned would include the date, the amount of the sale, the customer name, the salesperson, and any comments).  I could ask my K-Log tool to ask the system my question every hour and publish it to a category on my K-Log called "sales."  I could even post an annotation to that new data by editing the automated post. 

So, now that the information is published to my K-Log as a category specific site, it is possible for people to subscribe to this "sales" newsfeed.  If tied to an IM system, subscribers could get a report on news sales sent to them as an instant message. 

Hopefully, you can see the power and the flexibility in this arrangement.  However, it is clearly an advanced extension of K-Logs into automated data streams.  This could yield excellent results given that control of this information is in the hands of end-users -- where it belongs. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
1:03:19 PM    comment   

What could smart money do?  First, smart money would be very difficult to counterfeit (this problem is rampant internationally right now, particularly given that there are so many countries now using the greenback as their defacto currency).  Second, once a bill was in your control, you could potentially put limits on how it was spent.  For example:  you could put a "no tobacco and alcohol" restriction on all bills given your kids.  This would be a one-time use restriction and would terminate during a valid transaction.  I could use a longer term restriction on the bill's use and vote with my pocket book by putting "green only" limitations on its use (so the bill could never be used by products from corporations that pollute -- granted, this would discount the value of the currency, given the restriction, but it might be worth paying for...).

This is interesting and brings up the question:  should the smarts be decentralized or centralized?  Certainly, centralized systems have problems.  It would invite abuse by the gov't.  Decentralized systems are more interesting but require more computing power on the bill itself.  Very interesting stuff to think about although entirely unworkable.  [John Robb's Radio Weblog]
12:06:27 AM    comment