Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Gigabit or Bust A couple of interesting new sites: Schoolmatters.com Offenderhelp.com Dubai talks about e-government more than just about any country in the world.  Now, they have added a new Harvard-certified e-government leadership program at the new Dubai School of Government.  The demand is already three times capacity. Socitm, a company that evaluates British websites, says in their report, Better Connected 2005, that 65% of egov websites have improved in the past year.  They evaluate sites fitting into four categories: promotional, content, content plus, and transactional. The latest Nielsen/Netratings report shows that internet use has peaked in the US, with an actual decline in number of hours spent online in February 2005 from 2004.  That may change as more integration occurs between computing devices and traditional entertainment systems. According to the EU, over 90% of public service providers in Europe are now online and over 40% of basic services are now fully interactive. Some are warning against a central biometrics database in England. There's a growing debate about taxing eBay profits. Wisconsin announces a number of cost-saving and consolidation initiatives, reducing the number of email servers from over 200 to less than 20 and saving over $5 million on PC purchases. The University of Arizona and Arizona State Unviersity are joining CENIC for $5.38 million which will provide access to National Lambda Rail beginning July 1.  CENIC has prepared this assessment guide as part of their "One Gigabit or Bust" initiative. This chart compares the data performance and range of various copper, fiber, and wireless services.  We're looking at a new wireless service on 700 MHz that claims to deliver 24 megabit service to a 6-mile radius. There are some very interesting presentations available from CENIC's recent conference such as this one on how CENIC and NLR Access Leverages NASA Supercomputing. 8:13:39 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Fletcher.