Firefox users see fewer ads

A Cnet article details a surprising study that shows Firefox users see four times FEWER ads than Internet Explorer users.

Firefox is the free Web browser that is increasingly popular with Windows users because it is faster and has fewer security problems than IE. It also apparently does a much better job of blocking pop-up ads, which may account for some of the differences between the two groups.

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BellSouth eyes video

According to a CNet article, BellSouth plans to provide higher capacity broadband to most of its customer base in the next five years.

Video is driving the plans. The cable companies have not only captured about 75% of the broadband market, compared to the phone companies' paltry 15%, but the cable companies can offer the fabled triple play--voice, data, and video.

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Pillcam an easier pill to swallow

The USA Today had a story yesterday (page 11D) about the PillCam, a screening device that you swallow. While it travels through your body, it sends video and still images back to the doctor. The "pill," which is not much bigger than an oversize vitamin capsule, is much easier to take (literally) than an endoscopy, which requires sedation and the insertion of a tube down the throat.

It gets patients in and out of the doctor's office more quickly and with less risk. An endoscopy might still be required as a followup if the doctor decides a tissue sample is needed.

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Ukraine and the Internet

It's not being covered much in the news, but you can be sure that the demonstrations against the stolen election in Ukraine is being organized in large part via the Internet.

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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.

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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 commun

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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NASA scramjet breaks speed records

NASA's X-34A scramjet broke every speed record in the book by traveling at nearly Mach 10, or about 7,000 miles per hour. Scramjets have been studied and under development for years, but they were mostly theoretical--no one was really sure they would work.

Scramjets, in addition to some military uses, offer an alternative to expensive and heavy chemical rockets for getting into space. One more signal for the emerging Space Economy.

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Does the FCC control everything digital?

It's hard to know which way the wind blows in the corridors of the FCC. Hard on the heels of thoughtful rulings on the future of VoIP, the FCC has turned around and claimed jurisdiction over, well, everything digital, including your computer. That's the conclusion of a lot of interested parties, anyway.

The current gasoline being thrown on this fire is the Broadcast Flag mandated by the FCC to be supported on all TVs beginning with sets manufactured next year (right around the corner). The broadcast flag is a bit that tells the set or recording device that the content (i.e a television program, movie, etc.) cannot be copied.

The thinking here was that digital TV would never take off unless the content creators (the giant media companies) were protected against rampant piracy. As the Ars Technical article notes, the FCC continues to be too easily influenced by the incumbent media companies, and tends to pay too little attention to consumer interests.

I have to agree. I don't see that Congress has directed the FCC to "make sure the big media companies don't suffer any competition." The FCC ought to be seeking to create a level playing field for all content providers, large and small. Secondarily, the notion that consumers are just a bunch of thieving pirates is not only extraordinarily small-minded, there is absolutely no evidence to support it. VCRs, twenty-five years ago, were going to kill the movie industry. Now movie makers make more from selling recorded movies than they typically make in theatre box office receipts.

We have a more recent example in the music industry. Even while music industry groups continue to sue consumers for filesharing, they are making hundreds of millions of dollars on legal music downloads. Why is the FCC falling for this nonsense?

New technology and new delivery systems for entertainment always create a period of displacement; it's the beauty of creative destruction. Time after time, we have seen new and bigger markets (and new job and work opportunities) emerge out of the ashes of old businesses. As a country, why are we trying to preserve the near monopoly status of buggy whip makers?

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The fog of telecom

There is a fair amount of disinformation being bandied about on the issue of community-managed telecom infrastructure. Read this article [link no longer available] by the deceptively name "Heartland Institute" for an example of a very one-sided view of community investments in telecom.

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Ukraine has a vision for the future

Ukraine, a country still struggling with the legacy of the Soviet past, has what many other states in the U.S. still lack--a coherent and easy to explain vision for the future. BusinessWeek has a short article on the country's drive to be one of the top software and IT countries in the world.

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Big Brother will be watching while you drive

In a deeply disturbing ruling, the National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that car manufacturers must put black box data recorders in new cars and trucks. The boxes will record speed, acceleration, braking, direction, and other data that could be used to reconstruct accidents, among other things.

Movies on your cellphone

If you've ever wondered, as I have, what on earth you would do with the new "movie" feature being advertised on cellphones, wonder no longer! You can watch advertisements!

Yes! In your spare time, if you have had nothing to do, you've been wishing for access to some good ads. "Gosh, I'm bored. I wish there was a good ad I could watch."

Rest easy. Now you can watch movie trailers on your cellphone.

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