Technology Futures

The Australian, a major paper in Australia, has sold out the ad space on its iPad version of the newspaper. At least one paper intends to stay ahead of the news game and make the new medium work for its business. Good for them.

Google has announced the fall, 2010 availability of Google TV, which is a set top box but may also be built in to some new TVs. The little video that is embedded in the linked article shows an interface that looks remarkably similar to the interface used by the Apple TV appliance, which is also a set top box. Either Apple nailed the interface design for this kind of device, or Google could not come up with anything better, or both.

The problem I suspect I will have with Google TV is that I"m pretty sure the Google TV device will send everything I watch or anyone in my family watches to Google, where they will add it to the massive dossier they have already collected on me and everyone else in the country. Google TV will also conveniently, I'm sure, provide handy connections to other Google services like Google Docs. Google is going to take over your life, one little "free" service at a time, until you can't do anything on the Web without touching some kind of Google service. Google could easily build in an "opt in" feature that only allows them to collect personal information if you expressly agree, but their general tendency for other products and services is to collect first and ask later, or worse, include a requirement to let them have all your personal information in return for the "free" service. It's a Faustian bargain.

The City of Palm Coast, Florida formally opened its high performance fiber network on Tuesday. Design Nine provided the early phase planning, financial and business modeling, network architecture design, vendor evaluation, and equipment and contractor procurement. The open access network opened with two service providers and several business customers on day one.

DirecTV recently announced it was bringing more jobs to southwest Virginia, but these are not traditional jobs. Instead, these are work from home jobs. The company is establishing a virtual call center. Congressman Rick Boucher made a sweep through the region last month to announce the new job opportunities, which amount to 100 new jobs. DirecTV already employs more than 1100 home-based workers, and other major firms like Apple have been making heavy use of home-based workers for several years.

What does this mean for economic development? Several things jump out:

• Neighborhoods and rural roads are now business districts.
• These new business districts need affordable, business class broadband services, including not just Internet access but VoIP telephone service and the ability to support high performance VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) for access to corporate data centers.
• Symmetric bandwidth is essential for some kinds of work from home opportunities, and most existing cable and DSL residential services don't support symmetric bandwidth.
• Training and re-training the local workforce to qualify for these jobs should now be part of economic development activities.