Kissco? July 30, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentA picture is worth a thousand words.
A video of Internet geeks hanging out with Kiss? Utterly priceless.
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Opening Skirmish July 25, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentIf the buzzword of the ICT industry has long been “competition,” then what could be more illustrative of that than the coming smartphone wars?
TechCrunch has a great piece on an anonymous venture capitalist’s 2-week side-by-side trial of the iPhone and the new Wi-Fi equipped BlackBerry 8820. We’re going to see a lot of these in the coming months, as buzz, reality, business, and marketing all converge on the latest technology cycle.
I’m product neutral here at TeleCommunities for obvious reasons. But it’s super-fun to watch the media world dissect the smartphone revolution. How many winners and loser will there be, and who?
It may be just as fun to read the comments of tech participants below the post, especially when they slam one another — I’ll be looking for that in similar blogs.
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The Richard Branson of VoIP? July 23, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentIs this a challenge?
Pulver has always been a friend to us here at TeleCommunities, even if we don’t agree on all the issues. His faith in the power of disruptive technology is contagious. I wonder if any of our smaller members might be the company to meet this new dare…
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Checkers, Senate Broadband Bills… and the Soul? July 20, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : What's New?, Networking, Policy , add a commentVia Farhad Manjoo’s Machinist blog:
Scientists at the University of Alberta report that they’ve built an unbeatable checkers-playing computer. Their machine, Chinook, has solved checkers: It proves that if two players play perfectly, making no mistakes, the game of checkers will result in a draw.
The proof required analyzing 500 billion billion checkers positions — 5 x 1020 — a computational process that began in 1989 and has been running on hundreds of processors almost continuously since. Chinook now knows everything about checkers, the perfect response to any move, and the best that any human can do is drive Chinook to a draw. You can never win.
I’ll spare you my usual romantic gushing about how the current tech and communications revolution is changing the way we understand life itself — but they’ve figured out checkers!!
All joking aside, it’s worth noting that this connects very profoundly to some of the biggest questions facing the ICT industry now. With all the information-processing power now available, it may be that we can resolve major policy debates with hard facts about how specific solutions affect all citizens, not just the vocal or geographically privileged ones. And this is the sentiment, at least, behind S-1492, the broadband data mapping bill passed unanimously yesterday by the Senate Commerce Committee.
TIA has strongly supported the bill since its introduction in late May despite the now obviously-unfounded buzz that it couldn’t gain bipartisan support. Why? Well, for one, it finally gets us down the road to a better understanding of our broadband penetration numbers.
(more…)
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We Really Better Get Public Safety Sorted Out July 19, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentFrom Andrew over at Tech Daily. Words fail.
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More MSM 700 MHz coverage July 18, 2007
Posted by ianmartinez in : General , add a commentAnother 700 MHz shoutout from WaPo:
I think the paper continues to do a balanced job of presenting the issues as they are debated without privileging one perspective over another.
Under proposed FCC restrictions, the winning bidder on one block of spectrum would have to allow any device or application to be used on its network so long as it didn’t harm the network. Some tech companies such as Google argue that these “open access” restrictions don’t go far enough. But the further restrictions they’re pushing for would reduce the value of the spectrum without any assurance of making the industry more competitive or producing a viable entrant.
And there you have it. Of course onerous access restrictions will limit providers’ incentive to build out, undermining all the effort in Congress and at the FCC, I might add, to bring the number of un- or under-served households down to zero.
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