Monthly Archives: October 2004

WISP.Org … coming soon …

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Several companies in the Wireless ISP market have all realized the
value of building community to increase the sharing of knowledge. 
80211.net L.L.C., working with TenX Networks, is glad to announce the coming of WISP.Org!

WISP.Org will be the on-line resource for Wireless Internet Service
Providers. Using current generation Open Source software (phpBB),
WISP.Org is going to create an on-line community that will tap into the
minds of leading providers of wireless products and services.

Stay tuned … look for updates … our planned rollout will be December 1, 2004!

Utah storms, and various outages

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We apologize to ur Wasatch County, Utah customers as we had quite a
week of storms … and problems … up here.  It turns out that
some of out new outdoor wireless equipment was not as waterproof as
they had hoped.  With the large storm system that came to the
county a week ago Sunday, we lost a total of three new pieces of
equipment due to water leaks.

The vendor was great about things.  We lost our main wireless
tower at our headquaters on Monday morning, after the initial front hit
us.  We exchanged this device with a spare that we had on
hand.  The next night – Tuesday – we lost that spare, and the Wing
Pointe apartments location.

On Wednesday, we were able to get the repairs completed with assistance
from the great folks at Euclid Timber Frames.  The vendor has
determined the problem and replaced our units.  We are back up and
running, and continuing to upgrade the network.

Wells Fargo On-Line Banking

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I have to admit that I am impressed – over and over again – by Wells
Fargo and their On-Line Banking. When my old bank – First
Interstate – was acquired, I immediately joined the new Wells Fargo
On-Line Banking program, and was impressed that I could manage my
personal and business accounts in a single application. The user
interface was easy to use, and I even was able to mix personal and
business on-line bill paying in an efficient manner.

A while back, they further impressed me when I had to locate some old
bank statements for one of my companies. Not only did they allow
my to locate them on-line, they provided them in Adobe .PDF format …
for NO charge! I was able to download and print the statements that I required to complete my taxes …

Today … more. When I happened to go and look at one of my
business accounts, I noticed they added a new link next to each check
that has cleared – View. Yes … when I click the link, it
provides the scanned image – front and back – of the check
itself! Oh yeah … and it appears to be free … no additional
charge!

I’m impressed with Wells Fargo On-Line Banking …

What the BLEEP do we know!?

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On Friday night, my wife and I went to see a movie that was recommended by a friend. What the BLEEP do we know!?
is an amazing film that is like no other. Do not expect passive
entertainment, or the typical story lines. This is a film that
explores the reaches of science into quantum mechanics, and it’s
effects on our perception of reality. It begins to explore our
ability to “cause” in the universe, and how we shape our own reality by
our own behaviors.

The movie is receiving mixed reviews … and that is a good indicator
of controversy! Anyhow … I would recommend this movie to anyone
… and be prepared to think … not just watch!

Mesh Networking continues to emerge

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More than five years ago, I was introduced to the concepts of “mesh
networking” at George Gilders TeleCosm conference.  A speaker from
MIT talked through the basic concept of turning every radio in a
network into a “packet repeater” that was able to send and receive
packets of data … and also forward them on for other users of the
network.

Mesh has slowly been evolving in the various research circles … and
is now emerging in various projects and commerical companies.  One
of the places to look for more information is the IETF Manet working group.  There are several experimental standards that have been developed.

In the commercial space, there are now several companies coming up – LocustWorld is an interesting system being used in the UK, PacketHop is a company using research out of SRI, and now Strix Systems mentioned in the article below.

I am currently working on two different embedded Linux systems … both
of which I want to embed mesh/manet software.  I’m working to have
demonstrable units this winter …

DON’T LAUNCH — The Structured Wireless Revolution.
Mesh technology allows networks to be redefined around business needs,
work operations, data and employees, says Strix Systems’ Bob Jordan. [Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News]

Open Source BPEL Engine

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While working on our Web Services Substrate, we did a lot of looking at
the coming BPEL standard.  While it doesn’t do everything that we
wanted, it provides some powerful functionality, and will only evolve
to be better and better.  I happened to stumble on this Open
Source project providing a BPEL engine … I’m going to go take a look
at it …

ActiveBPEL 0.9.2. An engine that executes BPEL processes. [freshmeat.net]

Interview with Ray Kurzweil in CIO Magazine

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Over the last decade, there are few people that have impacted my thinking, and my perspective of technology and the future, as Ray Kurzweil.
He is an astounding individual who has been able to think far beyond
the bounds of the average person. He has also built and sold
companies that have capitalized on his foresight … and he continues
to move forward.

There is a new interview with Ray Kurzweil in CIO Magazine
that presents some of his current thoughts on where we are, and where
we are going. With my view of the world, I do not question his
predictions of the future … we are living in incredible times …

Problems with PayPal IPN

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I am slowly learning about the issues with relying on an Internet
service like PayPal. They have somehow totally screwed up their
software, and it is no longer calling our system to notify us of
payments as of today.

We use PayPal to allow our 80211.net
Internet customers to purchase Internet Access on-line. When they
make a payment, they expect to be able to use the Internet
immediately. This has been working great up until now, using the
PayPal IPN (Instant Payment Notification) service. Somehow PayPal
has screwed up their systems, and the IPN notifications are no longer
hitting our server … so people are paying, and their accounts are not
being updated. So today I have been fielding calls and having to
manually credit people’s accounts … which sucks.

This is just another example of where the concepts around the Internet
and hosted services breaks down. It is really too bad that PayPal
didn’t test their software updates better before deploying them on
their “live” site. People complain about Microsoft and Windows
… but this is a more important example to me since it is costing me
time and money … and there is no one that is going to recover the
costs for me.