Technology Futures

Here is a long article [link no longer available] that goes into some detail (very readable and not heavily technical) about cold fusion and a new approach to room temperature fusion that has been carefully checked by several different scientists and groups.

James Carlini, who writes in ePrairie, an Midwestern online business and technology magazine, has a terrific article taking Illinois leaders to task for shirking their responsibilities to the the public at large and to businesses and communities in the state.

It's hard to improve on Carlini's thoughts, so I'll include just one item from the article. You can read the entire piece here.

Here is an article [link no longer available] (registration required, unfortunately) that shows just how far off base both the FCC and the telcos are in their thinking.

Kevin Martin, the new FCC Chairman, says he will consider "fewer rules" for television regulation. Basically, the telcos want to deliver TV but don't want to do what the cable companies are required to do, which is to negotiate a franchise agreement with every town in America.

I wrote recently about Seattle's plan to invest heavily in fiber. The work that the city has done now seems even more timely because a list of "Most Unwired Cities" came out recently, and Seattle holds the number one slot, just as the city has identified "wired" technologies like fiber as critical. One of the things everyone forgets is that "unwired" hot spots still have to get access back to the wired network, and fiber is usually the most desirable way to do this.

Here is an excellent and relatively optimistic summary of what's happening at the state and Federal level with respect to anti-muni broadband, or as my old friend Gene Crick would say, "...the best laws money can buy."

I'm not the only one concerned about Google's policy of storing everything you and I do on their servers--forever. This New Zealand article [link no longer available] also expresses concerns about the way Google keeps tabs on everything we do.

Google hides behind the polite fiction that keeping everything is a "service" they perform for us, but we don't get access to the data. The "service" they perform is to mine our searches, our email, and the newsgroups we browse and use them to sell advertising space.

Afghanistan has converted successfuly to a new countrywide all digital television system, while the FCC dithers in the U.S. with a myriad of mostly irrelevant and/or conflicting regulations on the U.S. television industry.

In what has to be a sign of desperation, SBC has dropped the price of its entry level DSL service to $14.95 a month. Claiming that the online registration "lowers costs," the telco is also giving customers a $99 credit towards home networking gear like wireless access points.

Kevin Martin, Michael Powell's replacement as the Chairman of the FCC, said in an interview that broadband is a top priority for the agency. This article [link no longer available] has some of Martin's comments, but it does not shed much light on where the FCC is likely to take the broadband issue in the future.

Slashdot reports on a coffee shop that has started turning it's WiFi off on weekends. WiFi "squatters" were sitting at tables for six to eight hours at a time, preventing other patrons from finding a place to sit, and worse, some squatters were not buying anything.

It might be that some clearly posted rules would also mitigate the squatters, and it's an interesting contrast to other published reports that some businesspeople have seen receipts and profits rise after installing WiFi.

Newspapers have been having a hard time with the Internet. Readership of the ink on dead trees editions decline year by year, and instead of taking any responsibility for the lack of appeal, they blame it solely on the Internet itself, although I see a few signs of change.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has an article on a report issued by a City of Seattle task force that concluded that the city has to take broadband seriously, and must begin immediately.

This is a must read article that makes many good points. Rather than rehash them, here are some of them verbatim:

Pat Valente, the Deputy Director for the Department of Development of Ohio, spoke at the Ohio CDC Technology conference about the state's strategy for economic development. Here are the key points:

• Focus on the core competencies and strengths of the state.
• Encourage collaboration among state agencies, industry, and university researchers to help create innovative new products and services.
• Ohio intends to compete fully in the global economy, and nothing less is acceptable.
• Translate research into products; Ohio wants to help university researchers translate research results into commercial successes.
• Entrepreneurs are creating the new jobs, and it is the job of economic developers to nurture entrepreneurs.
• Provide capital for early stage ventures.
• Invest in workforce development so that Ohio has workers with the advanced skills needed to find and keep good paying Knowledge Economy jobs.

What is most interesting about Valente's remarks is what went unsaid. There was nothing about industrial recruitment or giving lavish tax breaks to big companies. Ohio is probably still doing some of those things, but the emphasis on entrepreneurs and support for innovation is refreshing. The state is also headed in the right direction by identifying assets and competencies already in the state and trying to leverage those, rather than just imitating what has worked elsewhere or just trying a lot of stuff and hoping something sticks.

As examples of this strategy, Valente mentioned a focus on fuel cells as an alternate power source. The state is funding research to use biomass as a feedstock for fuel cells, leveraging the state's agricultural industry. It is also funding the development of new polymers (plastics) from soybeans rather than fossil fuels, because the state is a big soybean producer.

If Ohio sticks to this plan, it will have an advantage over many other states that don't have the same level of focus. I thought only one thing was missing--a statement of intent to ensure that every business in the state has affordable broadband. If Ohio is serious about competing in the global economy, you can't leave this to chance.

ISUS (Improved Solutions for Urban Strategies) has an innovative alternative high school education program that helps high risk youths get a high school diploma while giving them a heavy dose of on the job construction training and high tech manufacturing skills.

The program provides proficiency-based high school classes that are integrated with work training in the construction industry. But the effort has a real high tech twist, and takes vo-tech to a whole new level by building and selling houses at market prices in distressed neighborhoods.

I am at the Ohio Community Development, Innovation, & Technology Conference in Columbus, Ohio, and I'll be posting highlights from the meeting for the next day or so. The conference is sponsored by the Ohio Community Development Corporation Association.

This article about grass roots television programming illustrates the perfect storm developing that has the potential to wreck the Hollywood-based entertainment corporations. Since the days of Milton Berle's live broadcasts, television content has been generated largely by Hollywood. It's been a tight knit cartel of writers, directors, producers, and production companies that have kept video content locked up pretty tightly, in large part because of the cozy relationship with the broadcast networks. Cable has been chipping away at that, but innovation in cable has meant largely following the same old model, but just doing everything as cheaply as possible.

The limitation has always been the same, whether you were delivering a television program over the air, by cable, or by satellite--you have only twenty-four hours per day per channel, so everything is a trade-off of demand versus air time.

Like nearly everything else it touches, the Internet just plain breaks that apart. On the Internet, content is not bound by the delivery mechanism, so we are seeing the end of CDs, the end of DVDs, the end of radio "channels," and the end of TV "channels." Channels were a construct based on the scarcity of bandwidth, and there is no scarcity on the Internet.

So for $1.99, you can download and watch a 45 minute video on how to barbecue a whole pig. But that's not even the interesting part. DaveTV, which is offering the video service, has a BBQ "channel" with more than 1000 video segments, just on barbecuing. Try doing that using the traditional television programming system. You can't. But the Internet makes it simple.

So here's the thing--Hollywood no longer has an edge--none at all. What about your region? Do you have some of the pieces in place to start some Internet TV video production companies? Is your town on a major fiber backbone that could be used to pump video to the rest of the country? Do you have some program assets that could be the basis of a channel like the BBQ channel?

If your community is looking at Broadband Over Powerlines (BPL) as a cheap way to get broadband out to neighborhoods or rural areas, you should read this article over at NewsForge, which says BPL still has some issues that have to be worked out.

Among the problems this article raises are relatively high costs, the need to deploy a fiber backbone to support neighborhood level BPL, and radio interference in frequencies used by public safety (fire, police, rescue).

Loma Linda, California, a community of 20,000 people, may be the first town in the country to require broadband infrastructure in new housing.

Instant messaging (IM) is not just a social networking tool for bored teenagers. A British study shows that while some abuse of IM is occuring in the workplace (no different than the telephone, the Web, or email), IM has some solid business benefits, including improved communications, faster decisionmaking, and better information gathering.

The article says that 62% of British businesses do not use the technology at all, suggesting that most firms lag well behind the curve in making good use of technology.

New Zealand, which is a country smaller than most U.S. states, is investing heavily in broadband, with a budget in the tens of millions of dollars. While too many state legislators (14 states at last count) are trying to limit broadband, we've got countries that are going in the opposite direction.