11 September 2002

Businesses Give Broadband Wide Berth Margaret Kane -- More than 20 percent of respondents in an In-Stat/MDR survey said they would not use any type of broadband service in their main offices. The study surveyed 109 "key decision makers" at large businesses between April and July of 2002 and was reported by CNET. Blame financial troubles and the subsequent slowdown in technology investments.

COSAC Runs in Naas Karlin Lillington -- The usual suspects attended COSAC, including a smattering of journos.

The Music Industry's Death Wish Dan Bricklin -- The music industry has a death wish. "Given the slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal customers. Perhaps the real reason for some of the drop in sales was the shutdown of Napster and other crackdowns by the music industry."

Remembering 9.11 One Year On FLAGSTAFF, Arizona -- Misty writes about 9.11. It's hard to believe that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell last year. I remember I was getting a drink of water from the drinking fountain outside of my math class when my best friend ran up to me and asked if I had heard. When she told me that an airplane flew into the tower, I thought it was a joke. I didn't think of any of the consequences. She said it was a terrorist attack, so I imagined a little airplane flown by the terrorist hitting the building to make a point. I didn't think innocent people were in the plane, thousands would be killed, and America would mourn for NYC, and then stand stronger than ever. My friend and I rushed into math, and instead of taking our test scheduled for that Tuesday, we watched the news. We watched the next tower fall, and witnessed the Pentagon burn. We were so proud of the passengers in the plane that banded together to make the plane crash in PA instead of hitting the other side of the Pentagon. Our teacher offered us his cell phone to call anywhere in the US if we had family that might be in danger. One boy took up the offer; 11 members of his family worked in the Pentagon. Five minutes later, he was crying for his 11 dead family members. They all worked in the same section that the plane hit. The rest of the week was constant news-watching and updating. People were still trying to figure out if their loved ones were indeed safe, trying to find a way back home from across country, and make up their minds on how many rights should be taken away to insure safety. Houses and cars pinned or taped up American flags, and people wore "United We Stand" or "I [heart] NY" and "NYFD" shirts. Everyone swore that they'd remember that day for the rest of their lives, and a year later with all the patriotic ads playing on the tv, memories flood into the heads of everyone. This was posted to the weblog by Misty through Hotmail during her third week at Northern Arizona University.

Repairing Fire Damage in the Pentagon with Wearable Computers 1D377 -- I used to work near the fire damage created by the jet that crashed into the Pentagon and the corridor is to reopen next week. Construction speed increased after construction supervisors started using wearable computers. The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant V wearable computers logged activities and shared info while on the move.  They featured detached touch-screen displays, digital cameras and headsets fitted with an earphone and microphone, and included Protolex software that accepted verbal, text and graphical data into predesigned templates.

Audioblogging WORLD-VOICES -- Good info regarding audioblogging via phone. The IVM can be used free as an answering machine (limited to a single voice mailbox application). If you intend to use more than one voice mail box, or the attendant menu function, you need to register the software and pay the reasonable (EUR 175 for "attendant professional license") fees.

Electronic Memorials on the Web Amy Harmon -- The Wayback Machine has discovered dozens of electronic memorials on the web. Those are separate entities, quite different from the selections ofexcellent news reportage on the day. "The Web allows everybody to be a memorializer," said Jeffrey Hyson, a historian at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, who has studied Sept. 11 Web sites. "It's not just the family members or survivors that can claim some stake. There's a sense that anybody, no matter how distant their connection to 9/11, has the ability and the right to offer their version of some memorial." The patchwork of Sept. 11 Web memorials includes Legacy.com, a commercial obituary site that created a special section for victims of the attacks, and CantorFamilies.com, where many of Cantor Fitzgerald's employees have made a mourning ritual of clicking through photographs and memories of their colleagues who died in the attacks.

Lessons of 9-11 Dave Winer -- "What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn't see that 9-11 was tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective? What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS?" In its reflective commentary today, the Irish National Broadcaster politely pointed to data showing more people die of AIDS in Africa every month than perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center. Those less fortunate deserve perdurable coverage too.

Carry Your Own Book of Tickets KILKENNY, Ireland -- I despise cars parked on sidewalks and will print a book of brightly coloured tickets to combat this parking blight. Aaron Donovan reports that concerned citizens are pitching a curbside battle against SUVs in NYC. "He walked to the car and, from a stack in his hand, took out a card colored the bright orange of a New York City parking ticket and imprinted with the word 'violation.' He slipped it under the windshield wiper."

Ray Ozzie on Tyranny, Terror and Technology Ray Ozzie -- Here's an essay on Tyranny, Terror and Technology worth reading from Ray Ozzie's Weblog. Ozzie believes that every organisation has rules laced with inter-communications within an organization, and these work like glue. Use too much and the enterprise is all gummed up with rules that get in the way of doing the job. Use too little and everyone is flying off in different directions, counter productive. The challenge is to get it just right, so that you have an agile team effort. Things get complicated by the organization fluctuating in size, so you need different strategies for different scales of operation. Also there is a spread of individual skills of participants in the organization, so until you get everyone up to speed on something, there has to be another way of getting the job done. Any time things are changed, there will be transitional confusion. I have worked in organizations that became too large and unwieldy. My colleague John Stanley reminded me how you have to allow for more networking time as you add more staff. In Ray Ozzie's mind, the permutations of all the different people who need to intercommunicate can bog down some things so that nothing can get done.

Sighting: Sharp Wireless Projector GIZMODO -- The Sharp XV-Z90S is the world's first wireless home digital projector.

Sighting: Belkin Wireless Router BELKIN -- Veteran cabling/adapter company Belkin now offers a new 11Mbps Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router (F5D6231-4). It has a 4-port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switch, and supports a variety of gateway features, including DMZ (machine exposing), NAT, IPSec pass-through, and stateful packet inspection plus 128-bit WEP keys. Due out Nov. 1 with Windows drivers, and Mac support to follow, the Belkin list price is $150. The interesting part about this unit is a prefab setup wizard customized for ISP integration: when run, it should automatically configure your gateway for your ISP's particular setup. When he tested it, Hahn Choi found the lost more data on throughput than similar routers. Early adopters prefer the Netgear alternative.

Is Roaming Coming to WiFi? CNET -- Networking groups are looking at ways to permit roaming for Wi-Fi. This would make a WiFi notebook as communicative as a mobile phone.