Tuesday, January 7, 2003

Wireless Strings Local reporting on Long Beach downtown Wi-Fi rollout: The article notes a few interesting points not raised in today's New York Times: downtown users will be limited to an hour a day to avoid annoying merchants with cybersquatters, and much of the equipment was donated, which doesn't make this a precise model to follow for future rollouts. [80211b News] broadband IV: the endgame. As cable companies continue to increase the cost of broadband service, and as telcom monopolies are strengthened by changes in FCC policy, it is now absolutely clear what the broadband endgame will be in the US: wireless. Think of a city where every single street light is a node in a mesh (for an example, see meshnetworks), and thus where the cloud of the internet sits on the street like the fog in San Francisco. For almost nothing, cities could provide IP light, as cities provide street lights. Neutral, end-to-end, fast, and cheap. (Apologies for this uncharacteristically optimistic post. Just a preview of the moot.) [Lessig Blog] 5:04:03 AM

Baltimore Sun: Matrics does RFID. TaNoah Morgan reports on Matrics, a Columbia, Maryland-based company in the RFID business. "The difference between a tag and a bar code is, no people are required," said Tom Coyle, vice president of supply-chain solutions. "You don't have to read tags one at a time. We can read hundreds at a time, and you don't need to be able to see [a tag] to read it." So a pallet with 60 cartons of cereal can appear or disappear at once in the inventory as it moves through a warehouse portal without anyone checking the materials in or out. And if a carton falls off the pallet or walks away, it can be tracked, or the system can send notification that the carton is missing. [Scott Loftesness] 4:57:20 AM

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