- Apple’s iPhone Wrecking the Cell Industry — bleat bleat. Andy Oram’s comment hits the mark: The music companies and AT&T were like travelers who refused to believe they were taking a long trip. They didn’t pack warm clothing, and therefore had to buy it at disadvantageous terms when they came to need it. Apple was more sophisticated about where all companies are going technologically, so they had what others needed.
- Fruux — a lightweight and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your Address Book, Calendars, Tasks and Bookmarks between different Macs. (via Daniel Raffel)
- Redflax — notable not just for art, but for the Maori quote: He toi whakaaro, he mana tangata – roughly translates: where there is creativity/artistic expression, there is human dignity/prowess.
- Google’s Chiller-less Data Center — Belgium has only 7 days (on average) when the ambient air temperature isn’t enough to cool the data center. Finally, a business model for unpleasantly-cold climates.
"telecom" entries
One hundred eighty degrees of freedom: signs of how open platforms are spreading
Visualize open networks–and remember how far we've already come from
the days before flat-rate long distance phone calls (much less app
stores for cell phones).
Innovation Battles Investment as FCC Road Show Returns to Cambridge
Opponents can shed their rhetoric and reveal new depths to their thought when you bring them together for rapid-fire exchanges, sometimes with their faces literally inches away from each other. That made it worth my while to truck down to the MIT Media Lab for yesterday’s Workshop on Innovation, Investment and the Open Internet, sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission. The event showed that innovation and investment are not always companions on the Internet. An in-depth look at the current state of the debate over competition and network neutrality.
Four short links: 20 July 2009
Silicon Valley's First Phone Company – A conversation with Ted Griggs
Ribbit bills itself as “Silicon Valley’s First Phone Company.” Recently I sat down with Ted Griggs, Ribbit’s CEO to talk about that tag line, Ribbit’s business and what’s behind their recent acquisition by British Telecom. It will be interesting to see how the telecommunications industry is going to handle the coming disruption as the public becomes accustomed to near-free calling and outside competitors like Google Voice and Ribbit accelerate the pace of innovation.
FCC discusses broadband: the job is a big one
Around the time I submitted a proposal on the White House’s open government dialog site for local forums to implement high-speed networks, the FCC released a 77-page report (in PDF format) that casts some light on the proposal. Their report, titled “Bringing Broadband to Rural America: Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy,” covers a huge range of ground (and retells a lot of standard stories, including the reasons for universal service in broadband and a history of public infrastructure efforts). This post details some of the impressions I got relevant to local forums.