Yes … it does! And I am a big promoter of this!
Does Wi-Fi threaten 3G cellular?: sure, but you’re giving up some quality of service. The reporter points out: who do you call when your free (or cheap) network goes down? Of course, the availability of cheap broadband coupled with cheap or free wireless may allow ubiquity to overcome utility problems.
Computers in the car … more coming soon …
I have been slowly outfitting my car with a variety of computers and applications. I see this as a big growth area as we create more powerful applications for navigation and communications … many of which will be used in our cars.
So far I am using my computer for both MP3 audio and navigation. I am using WinAmp (my favorite MP3 player) and Microsoft Streets & Trips. There are some other cool things that I’ve been working on … I have wireless in the car using a DLink 802.11b USB device so that when my car is parked in my garage or driveway I can remotely connect and transfer MP3s back and forth. I also have the GPS connected with the Microsoft software for all navigation.
My next step is to get Jabber working over a cheap CDPD modem for full time presence and instant messaging from my car!
Motorola takes the driver’s seat. video The electronics maker announces deals with BMW and Audi to equip cars with telecommunications and computing capabilities. [CNET Tech News]
Another cool VC is formed …
This is yet another VC firm being created at the right time … I like the fact that it is a Microsoft exec, and they are looking for the creative start-ups …
Microsoft veteran to fund start-ups. Hoping to score some dot-com downturn bargains, Peter Atkins is leaving the software giant to start a venture capital firm for high-tech media and services start-ups. [CNET Tech News]
A handheld Linux machine for point applications …
This is a very good start on a whole new class of mobile and (potentially) wearable computers. It appears to be a Linux machine with a huge hard drive and some basic applications. It is also a MP3 player, and seems to have quite a bit of extensibility. I am determined to see if they have a booth at Comdex coming up in Las Vegas next month! I really want to take a look …
Linux handheld device holds 10GB. A Singapore company unveils the Terapin Mine, a handheld device that stores up to 10GB of data and multimedia files. [CNET Tech News]
The continuing evolution of Instant Messaging … as people learn …
This is a good article that outlines the continuation of the learning process about Instant Messaging. One of the things that I learned while working in this area of research is that there is considerable confusion about exactly what we are talking about when we say “Instant Messaging”.
While working on the digitalme project at Novell, I had created a foundation framework for identity, community, and communications. Within this framework I quickly realized that it is not about “instant messaging”, but instead we are seeing a number of human behaviors and interactions collapsed. There is being, community, identity, and communications … and all of these are collapsed in our current conversations about “instant messaging.”
Being … that is who we are … who we are being. We then create relationships … which generates and creates community. Community then can give us identity … indicating who we are being repeatedly in that community. We then can indicate who we are being at any point in time (presence), and allow for various forms of communications at any particular time.
So what we really have is a way to organize the communities that we are a part of, and the members of the communities that we communicate with. We can then “see” their status and who they are “being” at that moment (presence)… and then we can choose the way that we (and they) wish to communicate. The aspects of building our “buddy list” and the indication of “presence” are some of the most critical components, but tend to be lost in these articles.
The next wave of instant messaging. Who needs e-mail, or even the phone? New tech plans to take IM far beyond the simple text message. [CNET Tech News]
More 802.11b access locations … looking for the business model that works!
More hotels that are installing 802.11b wireless access for customers … and more indications of just how widespread this is going to become.
Hotel chain offers wireless Net access. The Four Seasons hopes to spoil business travelers with its newest luxury: wireless Internet access based on WiFi, or 802.11 technology. [CNET Tech News]
Tracking the popular memes …
One of the areas that I have been facinated about for quite some time is the tracking of popular ideas and current trends. There are numerous ways to do this, and I proposed one at Novell while working for Drew Major – Flow Mining. Flow Mining is the mining of data which flows through the net … with Novell I was interested in mining the flow of URL requests received by a proxy/cache.
This is another innovative approach to the same thing … looking at what URLs are placed in weblogs … what is of interest to people generating weblogs. There is a lot that can be learned by this, including observing which domains generate the most interesting URLs, and which URLs are growing from no interest to more interest.
This is a very cool project that has a huge amount of potential in many directions … IMHO.
Tracking Bloggers With Blogdex. MIT’s Media Lab just rolled out Blogdex, which tracks the most popular links across thousands of weblogs. The plan is to help the media get a handle on the explosion of personal news. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
Distributed, replicated file and data storage …
This is a project that resembles the work of the Freenet organization … only this has the backing of Microsoft! They are creating a distributed set of shared storage as a solution for fault tolerant data protection. A group of people form a “replica ring” of sorts … and begin to store files on each others file systems. There is encryption and meta-directory capabilities which make this a very likely future.
MIT Technology Review: Fault-Tolerant File Storage. That earth-shaking experience got Theimer, then an operating systems researcher at Xerox PARC, thinking about how to make computer file storage systems radically more fault tolerant. His work has helped to lead to Farsite, a fail-safe storage technology being created at Microsoft. [Tomalak’s Realm]
Weblogging … a truly “humaneural” application …
This is a very good article, and outlines some of the benefits of “weblogging” … which I see as another step in the direction of “humaneural” applications.
A “humaneural” application is one which improves the effectiveness of communications with a community of people. It is an application which begins to mirror the neural structures of the brain. A neuron has the ability to monitor hundreds or thousands of other neurons, and then generate it’s own output signals. In the case of weblogging, when coupled with an application like Radio from Userland, this same architecture can be mirrored …
What become amazing is the concept of Internet attached devices which will generate weblogs that can be subscribed to. If you are not watching weblogging, Radio, and Userland … you might want to!
WTF is Weblogging
Chris Ashley has written one of the best articles I’ve seen about Weblogging, Really Simple Syndication and the communities that these systems create and cultivate. It’s no surprise that his site links to Peter Ford, who I’ve been working with on integrating weblogging into education. If you want to know what Weblogging is all about then put this on your reading list.
[Adam Curry: CurryDotCom]
PDA Abstraction …
Microsoft has got to love seeing this type of development going on. If and when this releases, I can run all of my Palm OS applications on my PocketPC … or better … on my wearable PC!
It is projects like this that demonstrate that the products that are developed around “scarcity” theory are doomed to fail. Powerful wearable systems are just around the corner …
PalmOS Emulation On PocketPC [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]