Technology Futures

Forty-four Colorado communities passed referendums that give those the communities the right to build their own broadband infrastructure.

Colorado is one of those states that had a legislature pass a law forbidding local community investment in broadband unless a public referendum was voted on. At the time (ten years ago) the incumbents probably figured that was a bar too high for those towns and counties to jump over.

But after a decade of poor and slow service, the referendums passed easily. As Gigi Sohn of the FCC noted recently, communities are going to have to build their own modern networks. And so they are.

All wireless "unlimited data" plans come with an expiration date. Once a cellular company's sales targets for new customer has been met, they change the "unlimited data" plan.

In this example, it is Sprint which has announced that once you use your monthly "unlimited" allotment of 23 Gig of data, you get throttled.

Exhibit Number One in the Museum of Why Wireless Won't Replace Fiber is data caps. If wireless was so wonderful, the cellular companies would not have to put data caps on their service. But the data caps PROVE that the wireless infrastructure can't handle the demand. If it could, they would not be doing this bait and switch.

LinkedIn can't seem to decide what it wants to be. A while back, it added Facebook-like features that everyone (including me) used for a while, but it takes time to sit on LinkedIn and read everyone's posts. Over time, the traffic on the groups has declined to the point where it is nearly non-existent. I know that some very large LinkedIn groups have a lot more postings, but my view is that if you have lots of time to write and respond to stuff on LinkedIn, you are probably not doing your job.

I got a message from someone today, and when I tried to reply, I found that LinkedIn had again changed its interface, and unless I missed it (entirely possible), there is now an instant message style interface. It took me ten minutes of clicking around a bunch of mostly blank screens before I was able to respond to the message request.

The new interface was (is) obviously buggy. So like many other Internet-based services, as these companies fiddle with the interface and the features, the software just becomes harder to use.

Once Skype was purchased by Microsoft, we noticed a gradual and steady decline in the quality of the software. As an example, we used to use the file transfer feature all the time (i.e. several times a day). We are back to emailing files around or putting them on the shared server (both less convenient) because the Skype file transfer fails so often we now just ignore it--if you can't predict when it will work and when it will fail, it is useless.

Apple has similar problems. In their desired to make all their Mac apps "the same" on the Mac and on iPads/iPhones, they have not only removed features, screwed up a wonderful interface, and introduced bugs. And they don't really seem to care very much. Steve Jobs has to be spinning in his grave.

So certain portions of the InnerTubes are all abuzz over this supposed new app and service called Peeple.

It is hard to know where to start, as there are layers of fear, loathing, intrigue, and suspicion swirling around this new service. The fact that it already has a page on Snopes.com should tell you something.

In short, Peeple is being described as "Yelp for people." So instead of posting a review about the restaurant where you just had dinner, you can post a review about your boss, your mother-in-law, the roommate that cheated you out of the last month's rent...anyone you like or don't like.

This has to be the worst idea of all time, and part of the reason some people suspect the whole thing is a hoax is because the core concept is so horrifying--is there anyone who thinks this could turn out well? Apparently the two founders do; they have a background in corporate HR, so you can sort of imagine that being able to easily check up on prospective hires might have some appeal.

But right now, the app and the underlying service seems to be vaporware, and there is much discussion that the November date for a beta version seems unrealistic.

I'm a bit jealous, as this would make a great April Fool's joke, but it is October, not April, and there are reports that they have raised several million dollars in venture capital.