23 August 2002

Marrying WLAN to GSM ALL NET DEVICES.com -- Transat and Intel hope that the smart cards of 3G GSM phones could become the trusted device identifiers in the future of mobile hotspot roaming, leading to one bill for all use.

Win the Google Quiz

Who is on Topgold's Blogstreet? BLOGSTREET -- Being a voyeur, I enjoy looking at what other people read. The blogstreet reveals the neighbourhood's linked relationships.

Could Index Be a Klog? TEMPLE BAR -- Those active in the blogosphere know a klog is a knowledge-management weblog. For Tom Murphy of Spin Solutions, you could use weblogging tools (like Moveable Type, Blogger, Manila, or Radio) or you could use something more potent, like Index. It would be easy to use Index when writing about your work, what happens, and what you know about. Then you could use RSS to aggregate all the content you track to form your conclusions. Soon, you have the core of a knowledge management system.

Why So Vacuous a Creative Commons John Robb -- Several people have noticed The Creative Commons is empty. Not many want to put anything into it. "Or we want to be selective about it," says Dave Winer. "You can read Scripting News and DaveNet for free. You can even use Radio and Frontier for free, for a short period of time while you evaluate the software. But this world, with doctors, hospitals, grocery stores, cars, gas, insurance, medicine, lawyers, etc, requires money. The trick is to have art in your life and make some of it pay. And that in itself is an art." From my vantage point, both schools of thought rotate around the numinous status afforded to copyright.

Last Mile to the Home is the First Mile to Optical Network Profits SILICON VALLEY.com -- Former JDS Uniphase chief executive Kevin Kalkhoven says that the overbuilt fiber-optics industry can't rely on long-distance communications to justify its existence but must seek profitability by focusing on the consumer market. "It's the end user, stupid. It's the end user that will determine the growth of industry," he told the attendees at the Opticon 2002 conference. "It's the first mile -- and the first inch -- that will build demand for bandwidth." The new wireless networks for broadband Internet access are brought to homes at lower costs than through traditional cable or DSL lines.

Mobile Operators Must Get into WLAN Space In-STAT/MDR -- If they don't act quickly, mobile operators may miss their chance to get a critical head start in the burgeoning public Wireless LAN market. The high-tech market research firm reports that offering WLAN services today will enable mobile operators to experiment with broadband services, to combine them with their GPRS and CDMA 1x RTT offerings, and migrate users to WCDMA when it becomes available. If they delay in implementing WLAN technology, competitors will get a sole head start over mobile operators, covering all the hotspots and competing head-on with their future services.

Hit Charade SLATE -- Mark Jenkins writes about the music industry's self-inflicted wounds.

The Most Downloaded Album is the Best-Selling WASHINGTON POST -- Speaking from a front-line vantage point where I watch the download trends of college students, I would concur with the Washington Post that Washington Post"the most downloaded album in Internet history -- the recently released 'The Eminem Show' -- is also the best-selling album of the year, which suggests that at least some fans were spurred to buy the disc even though they already had it stashed on their hard drives."