Exploring the impact of broadband and technology on our lives, our businesses, and our communities.
Windows machines are easy to hijack
A story in USA Today details how easily a Windows machine connected to the Internet (e.g. via DSL or cable modem) can be hijacked. Macintosh and Linux machines were also tested, but it was found that the numerous security holes in Windows made it more difficult to keep the machine secure.
Properly configured firewalls were considered essential, and on any of the machines running firewalls, there were no compromises. The Windows machines that were not running firewalls were broached "within minutes," with over three hundred attacks per hour noted on all the machines.
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The Internet as retailer
It is being widely reported that Internet shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend jumped dramatically, especially on Thanksgiving Day. Apparently, while everyone was waiting for the turkey to cook, twice as many people as last year went online to do a little shopping. Friday also saw a big increase (about 50% more).
The big loser was Walmart, which did not see the big increases expected. Other stores, like Target, apparently did better. There are all sorts of theories explaining various aspects of the holiday shopping--that Target offers a nicer shopping environment and better quality, that Walmart shoppers bought from Walmart.com instead of going to the store, and so on. All the explanations probably have some truth to them.
I'm more interested in the implications for smaller and rural communities. One interesting fact is that half of broadband users were apparently shopping online, by one estimate. That's a big number, and I think the reason is that you really need (and want) broadband for online shopping. Browsing an online catalog by dialup is painful. You might as well get in the car and drive to the shopping center.
For rural communities, affordable broadband and the willingness to shop online means people living in these towns and regions have much the same shopping alternatives available to them as people in the suburbs and big cities. But you have to have the affordable broadband.
It also means that small towns and communities may want to think differently about their approach to retail. In many of the towns and regions in which I work, there is much worry and discussion about the lack of retail. Maybe this is not the problem we think it is--if your residents have affordable broadband. It may be that money spent on retail initiatives might be better directed at quality of life issues that will attract entrepreneurs and businesspeople to the community, who know they can shop online, and instead want a Main Street that supports small businesspeople (lawyers, accountants, copy services, coffee shops, good restaurants, etc.). Finally, the change agent is affordable broadband. Instead of putting new street lamps on Main Street with the hope of reviving retail stores there, invest in a public broadband infrastructure that will bring broadband providers to town--thereby letting people shop online.
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"The real estate is the hard part"
This New York Times article is worth a read, despite the ad you have to click through (and NYT registration is required). It's about companies that are beginning to deploy WiMax.
The article helps dispel some of the hype, like the frequently quoted "up to 30 miles" range, which is actually about half that most of the time.
On the first page of the article, one of the owners of the profiled company confirms something I have been saying for years, that "The real estate is the hard part of the business." If communities would make very modest investments in identifying where to put antennas, provide easy permitting to mount antennas on public facilities, procure tower sites, and put up towers, it would be easy to get private sector companies to come in and offer affordable wireless broadband.
But you can't have it both ways. Too many communities complain about the lack of affordable broadband, but don't want to spend any money to get it. In smaller markets (i.e. virtually all rural communities), it is naive to expect every wireless provider to come in and make substantial investments in site surveys, permits, buy or lease real estate, and invest in towers.
Make all those available easily as community infrastructure. By doing so, the community can dramatically lower the cost of market entry for private providers.
And just to be clear, none of those investments involve getting into the service side of the telecom business, if you live in a state where the legislature has prohibited that.
On the second page of the article is another bit of information that also includes something that I have been warning communities about for years: cable redundancy. The WiMax company has a major business vulnerability because a key location has no alternate cable route. Every community needs to have a technology master plan that has a section detailing plans for redundant routes in and out of key regional towns and communities.
Technology News:
Firefox Web browser a big hit
Numerous reports from various sources are all pointing the runaway success of FireFox, the Open Source Web browser for Windows and other platforms. It has doubled its marketshare in the past year, and the recent release of version 1.0 has caused a big spike in downloads of the free browser.
Firefox sports significant user interface enhancements like tabbed browsing, which does away with the nuisance of having multiple browser windows littering your desktop. It also sports popup blocking, RSS news feed integration, privacy and security tools, and built-in Google searching. Microsoft does not plan an upgrade of Internet Explorer until 2006.
Technology News:
Solar and hydrogen fuel cells will power the grid
The Energy Economy continues to heat up--literally--as practical Stirling engines, powered by light, are getting an injection of technology. The Stirling engine was invented two hundred years ago, but it was hard to control, so it was largely a novelty item.
Recent work at Sandia Labs in New Mexico has Stirling engines looking like a useful source of electric power, using sophisticated electronic controllers that manage the output of the engines. Stirling engines have only a few moving parts, and are heated by a reflective dish that looks like an oversized satellite antenna. Sandia is designing a 20,000 dish farm of Stirling engines that would generate 230,000 volts of power for an electric grid, at costs near the average of today's fossil fuel generators. Buried in the article is a nugget indicating that they plan to use hydrogen fuel cells to store power during the day and release it at night, when the Stirling engines are shut down.
Does your region have a strategy to participate in the Energy Economy? Have you done an inventory of your manufacturing companies and entrepreneurs to find out who might already be positioned to grb a piece of the energy business?
Technology News:
Carbon nanotube yarns
Researchers have made what is being called a major breakthrough--a new process that allows the production of yarns made from carbon nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes have been around for a while, but it has been difficult to manufacture them in forms that make them useful. The ability to produce yarns will enable the production of fabric that can be used in clothing and in the design of other products. Carbon nanotubes are extremely strong while being much lighter than metals like steel and aluminum. One of the emerging markets where carbon nanotube products are likely to be important: space, including lightweight spacecraft and strong, durable spacesuits.
Technology News:
Iowa says it will be first in broadband
Iowa has what many other communities won't take the time to get--a clear, concise vision for the future. A consortium of Iowa communities and businesspeople have decided on a very simple goal--to have the best broadband infrastructure in the country.
Even better, based on the news article, they are doing it exactly the right way--with community investments in the transport layer (e.g. dark fiber) and leasing it to access and service providers who will deliver the services.
This approach is a win-win-win. Governments win because their investments are modest and manageable, and access fees provide a stable source of revenue to support the system. Private sector broadband providers win because they get access to more markets at lower cost, because the local governments are bearing part of the cost of infrastructure. Consumers win because the community investments expand the marketplace, create more competition, and lower the cost of broadband.
Don't forget that local government, schools, libraries, and health care providers are all users of broadband. Community investments lower costs for all users, public and private--don't discount the value of secondary savings from those initial public investments.
Technology News:
Philadelphia to fight ban on municipal wireless
The City of Philadelphia has been much in the technology news lately because of its ambitious plans to offer wireless broadband throughout much of the city. It's now back in the news with its announcement that it will fight a statewide ban on municipalities offering Internet access and related services.
On the one hand, these legislative attempts to throttle community projects are almost always the handiwork of the incumbent phone companies, who typically are nonpartisan in their strategy--they give money to all legislators, who then too often pass bills favoring these companies. A cynic might view this as selling out the electorate.
On the other hand, I don't believe local governments ought to be in the service business for broadband. It's not the same as water or electricity, and the fact that the community has municipal water and/or electric service does not, in my opinion, necessarily justify going into the broadband business.
As I have said repeatedly, I view more it like roads. Communities build and maintain roads, but they don't own the cars and trucks (or the businesses) that use those roads.
I'm very much in favor of municipal and local government investments in broadband, ESPECIALLY in underserved communities, but I think the way to do it is to keep the delivery of access and services in the private sector, where jobs are created and taxes are paid. It's a little more work and effort at the outset to make sure you have the right business and administrative model, but over the long term, making the private sector a partner is going to have a much better outcome.
Technology News:
Congress gives thumbs up to space tourism
A crucial step in the developing space tourism business occurred when the House passed a bill approving taking tourists into space.
At issue is the potential risk. Investors in the space business don't want huge lawsuits hanging over their heads, and the bill would allow companies to take tourists into space under the same "at your own risk" liability that other dangerous sports like mountainclimbing, hang-gliding, and skydiving have--you sign a waiver if you want to jump out of an airplane.
This bill still has to go through the Senate and get signed by the President, but the fact that the House acted quickly on this is a good sign. The emerging Space Economy marches on.
Technology News:
Making a list...
The Christmas catalogues are pouring into my mailbox, the newspaper is fat every morning with sales circulars from the local stores, and once again, electric razor ads are on TV (hint: no male has EVER bought an electric razor--spouses and significant others think this is something men want).
Just a year ago, I bought a progressive scan DVD player for $150, which I thought was a bargain. At that time, many progressive scan (better quality pictures) DVD players were often over $200. This morning, I saw an ad in the paper for a progressive scan player for $29.95.
It is amazing how much things have changed. I was in a small town restaurant two nights ago, eating dinner, and they had a stack of old magazines by the cash register. I picked one out to thumb through while eating. It was from 1998--a scant six years ago. In it, they had a short article explaining that DVD was this new kind of computer disc that could be used to play movies. It was treated as some exotic novelty.
Six years later, in our house, it's way too much trouble to watch a videotape. Remember those? Those old, antique things with moving parts, fuzzy pictures, and NO bonus material, director interviews, outtakes, dubbing in sixteen languages, or any of the other stuff that no one ever looks at but now comes on every DVD.
As an advocate of technology use, I find myself embarrased at the cheap junk being thrust upon us. Kid's toys are wretched excess. It seems that this year, virtually every toy made has about $5 worth of electronics (we're at a point where the cost of the batteries exceeds the cost of the electronics in the gadget).
Regrettably, I'm afraid that too many people think their kids will be technologically illiterate if they don't have electronic "books," electronic "first word" toys, electronic drawing games, and so on. The current crop of electronic "drawing" toys are apalling. The low resolution, the lack of printing ability, the lousy color choices, and the lack of appropriate tactile feedback are just the technological shortcomings of these things. What is much, much worse is the lack of intellectual adventure offered by them.
There is still no substitute for a sheet of blank paper and half a dozen crayons. You have an almost infinite array of colors (by combining and mixing, an important intellectual development activity), it's permanent archival storage (can be stored on the fridge door for years), and there is superb tactile feedback--also critically important developmentally for children.
The fact that this sort of device can be produced and distributed cheaply does not mean it is automatically a good idea. And that is the danger of the cheap electronics--we have to sort out what is important and what is not.
None of these devices really contribute to what I call "technological competency." Being able to use PowerPoint, as an example, has nothing to do with being technologically comptent. Being facile with PowerPoint is a learned skill that says nothing about your ability to use presentation software to express yourself thoughtfully. In fact, most of you would probably agree with me that PowerPoint seems to have a net effect of making virtually any topic duller than sand.
Owning and using a lot of gadgets does not make anyone smarter, better, or more thoughtful. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that exposing young children to too much TV, videogames, and other electronic gadgets is actually causing changes in the wiring of their brains, and it's not at all clear that is desirable.
If you have kids, buy them some Legos--just the plain ones, not the dumb theme kits. Legos, blocks, paper, crayons, and other toys that have no programmed purpose are the most challenging things you can give your kids, because it forces them to think--to come with their own ideas for how to do things. That's what is lacking in most toys today.
You'll also save a bundle on batteries.
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