Technology Futures

There are many articles and commentary on the recent announcement by the Governor of Ohio to create a statewide broadband network. But it is not clear what the impact might actually be. If you read the Executive Order closely, what you see is that Ohio, in many ways, is just starting to catch up to other states.

Legislators are finally getting the message about faulty electronic voting machines, and perhaps some of these machines will get auditable paper trails in time for the 2008 election. The House of Representatives is working on a bill that will require better accountability for the electronic ballot systems for all Federal elections, starting with the fall 2008 elections.

Senator Ted "the Internet is made of tubes" Stevenson is at it again, calling for "universal" filtering of the Internet to protect us all from pornography. The Internet pornography problem is a serious one, and deserves serious attention, but Senator Stevens is not making a serious proposal.

Our local paper, the Roanoke Times, has a series of articles on broadband today. There is a nice chart on the front page of the paper comparing various connection speeds, starting with dial up and progressing to some of the incumbent fiber connections. But the chart tops out at 30 megabit fiber service, which is still well below what residents in other countries are getting today, and is also well below what some U.S. communities are planning for roll out in the next six to twelve months: 100 megabit fiber service.

Those of us who have been on cable or satellite connections for our TV service for many years can easily forget that a lot of people still watch TV the old-fashioned way, from signals coming through the air from a nearby TV tower. In just about a year and half, all those TVs will stop working because Congress has mandated a switch to digital TV. The old TVs will need a converter box that is able to pick up the new digital over the air signals.

Those of us that have been watching how people use public networks (I started in 1982) know that there is a certain "newbie" phenomenon that takes place when some new feature or service is introduced. I have always been skeptical of the "social networking" trend, which is best represented by sites like FaceBook and MySpace.

This article suggests that Microsoft may be planning to build adware right into the Windows operating system. The software giant has filed a patent that would use the kinds of files you have stored on your hard drive to determine what kind of ads are displayed in your Web browser.

Privacy online is the same kind of oxymoron as "jumbo shrimp," meaning you should take the phrase with a grain of salt. The recent Miss America flap is a perfect illustration of the perils of taking online privacy for granted. Miss America had marked some photos on her Facebook page "private," but some people were able to access them anyway. The embarrassing pictures almost caused her to lose her crown.

An article on a fairly obscure tech blog provides details about the iPod that have been suspected for a long time but never confirmed. The iPod is a Macintosh. Apparently, the iPod has always been powered by Apple's OS X operating system (a smaller version, obviously, with fewer features). Over all this time, Apple has declined to provide any technical details of what software powers the iPod.

As you can see, we have updated the site. Please drop me a note (info -at- designnine.com) if you have any problems.

Thanks,
Andrew

Here is an interesting discussion from SlashDot. As Verizon brings fiber to a customer premise, they disconnect the copper phone line. This means it is no longer available for use by competitors, who can buy wholesale access to the line for voice and data services.

By all reports, the iPhone is already a success. Apple has not released complete sales numbers, but analysts who were predicting initial sales of 200,000 phones are estimating that between 500,000 and 700,000 phones have been sold. Virtually every Apple and AT&T store sold out of initial supplies in three days, and online orders are now being filled and delivered in as little as two days.

Affordable, high capacity broadband does not replace the basics. Roanoke has a small regional airport with the second highest landing fees in the country; lousy, overpriced coffee; poor food service; and extremely high ticket prices. That's not a formula for attracting businesses to the Roanoke and New River Valley regions.

If I was an economic developer in any state but California, I would be preparing a new marketing strategy that includes touting my region's reliable and affordable electric power. And I would be talking to my local electric utility about making sure every business park in my region has redundant electric feeds from two different substations.

It is every economic developer's nightmare. On the front page of today's USA Today (no link online), there is a list of the five states with the slowest broadband in the country. Who wants to be on that list?

The hype over the iPhone is reaching the boiling point as the release of the new gadget is now just a week away. Speculation over still unknown features, frustration over the price, and the lure of the touch screen interface that no one really knows much about is fueling the furor.

Wireless Internet access does not have to be slow, but it often is. I'm at the beach this week, and the access point is about thirty feet away, right at the edge of the property, but the speed of the paid service ($28/week, much higher than in hotels and other venues) is abysmal.

Wireless is often oversold by providers, who don't provision adequate backhaul and/or try to cram too many users on each access point.

ebay pulled all its ads from Google because Google is trying to compete with eBay's PayPal with a Google-branded payment system. However, that is not the story. The story is what happened after the ads were pulled: Nothing. Traffic to eBay dropped only a tiny amount, and eBay probably had a net gain because they saved money by not paying for Google ads.

A Mach 10 (ten times the speed of sound) test of a scramjet took place in Australia, where a rocket carried the scramjet into near space, then ignited the scramjet to return to earth. Scramjets are special jet engines that work at very high speeds and at high altitudes, and research has continued on them for decades with mixed success.

According to the latest international study on broadband use, the United States has fallen from 16th to 24th in number of households with broadband (53%). South Korea is the world leader, with more than 90% of homes connected. Japan, Germany, France, and the U.K are all well ahead of the U.S., so we cannot just dismiss South Korea's lead as simply a factor of household density.