[telecom-cities] We've moved to Google Groups

[Anthony Townsend]

The move should take affect later today.

The new list address will be [EMAIL PROTECTED]

[telecom-cities] Digital Media Europe: News - Municipal broadband deployments to double in 2006

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=12978

Municipal broadband deployments to double in 2006

27/01/2006 by John Tilak

There are over 400 cities worldwide currently planning to deploy municipal
broadband networks, and that number will double in 2006, making community
broadband initiatives a very real and significant trend, according to a
report from market research firm Visiongain.

Despite legal opposition and intense lobbying from incumbent telcos and
cable companies, municipal broadband is well on its way. As of the first
quarter of 2006, there are over 100 city and regional wireless broadband
networks operational worldwide, more than 40 of which are in the US.

Small town rural deployments were the beginning of the wave, but the tide is
now embracing large urban metropolises. New York, San Francisco, Rome and
Paris are among the major cities planning wide-scale deployments. Major
vendors, such as Motorola, Cisco, HP and IBM, are already reaping cumulative
contract awards running into hundreds of millions of euros.

For a large number of reasons, municipalities are considering the concept of
a municipal broadband network as the 'fifth utility.' These communities are
choosing between deploying fibre or wireless broadband networks using wi-fi
hotspots, mesh networks or pre-WiMAX technology.

[telecom-cities] Pigeons to blog on air pollution - 02 Feb 2006 - Technology

[Anthony Townsend]

Pigeons to blog on air pollution
 
02.02.06 9.00am
 
LONDON - A flock of pigeons fitted with mobile phone backpacks is to be used
to monitor air pollution, New Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.

The 20 pigeons will be released into the skies over San Jose, California, in
August.

Each bird will carry a GPS satellite tracking receiver, air pollution
sensors and a basic mobile phone.

Text messages on air quality will be beamed back in real time to a special
pigeon "blog", a journal accessible on the internet.

Miniature cameras slung around the pigeons' necks will also post aerial
pictures.

The idea is the brainchild of researcher Beatriz da Costa, of the University
of California at Irvine, and two of her students.

They have built a prototype of the pigeons' equipment, containing a mobile
phone circuit board with Sim card and communication chips, a GPS receiver,
and sensors capable of detecting carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.

"We are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone," da
Costa told New Scientist.

The team is planning to squeeze all the components onto a single board small
enough for the birds to carry in a backpack, New Scientist said.

The pigeons will take to the air at the inter-Society for Electronic Arts'
annual symposium in San Jose on August 5.

The data they send back will be displayed on the blog in the form of an
interactive map. 

[telecom-cities] Homeland Security Tries New 3-D Technology At Super Bowl XL

[Anthony Townsend]

ThePittsburghChannel.com
Homeland Security Tries New 3-D Technology At Super Bowl XL

POSTED: 3:31 pm EST January 31, 2006
(Courtesy Of LawFuel - The Law News Network) Birmingham, MI -- *** Homeland
Security Tries New 3-D Technology at Super Bowl XL ***

Hidden from public view at Super Bowl XL, live-action 3-D holograms created
from signals streaming in from networks of electronic eyes will help
Homeland Security Agency officials detect people and objects suspected of
endangering the 65 thousand ticket holders crowding into Ford Field, and the
thousands more celebrating in downtown Detroit.

While officials may not go public with the details, the surveillance effort
is likely to include:

-- scanning undersides of vehicles for suspicious objects

-- face-in-the-crowd recognition and feature-matching

-- monitoring street-level festivities, day and night

-- underwater Detroit River monitoring

-- classified methods of searching for and detecting potential threats.

Viewing 3-D holographic displays hidden in a security van, security
officials will, for the first time ever, view three-dimensional holography
that can reveal shadows, angles, depths and details unseen by conventional
imaging.

Super Bowl XL marks the first public security use of this new technology,
LifeVision3D(TM), from privately held Intrepid Defense & Security Systems,
Birmingham, Michigan.

Intrepid's CEO James Fischbach says his LifeVision3D(TM) system produces
"true, live-action 3-D. No funny eyeglasses. No 'virtual reality' goggles.
Instead, the action appears to move out from the surface of the screen and
envelop the viewer."

Mark A. Hammond, Deputy Director, Wayne County Department of Homeland
Security and Emergency Management, believes this technology "should be
considered a 'must have' for every agency and company with protection
responsibilities."

After over a decade in development, LifeVision3D now is ready for production
and sale. "Opportunities are opening up with government agencies, the
military, entertainment, medicine, and just about everyplace where people
are starting to appreciate what they can accomplish with live-action 3-D
holography," Fischbach says.

What's ahead? Intrepid's successful development of live-action three-
dimensional full color holography promises to leap ahead of current
technologies for:

-- Color night vision

-- Revealing details of ground images from satellites

-- Lifelike flight-training simulation

-- Arcade video games

-- Making education exciting

-- Space exploration

-- Underwater surveillance, threat assessment, exploration and recovery

-- Remotely controlled precision surgery (already demonstrated at Detroit's
Henry Ford Hospital).

Copyright 2006 Courtesy of SportsNetwork.

[telecom-cities] American Civil Liberties Union : Eavesdropping 101: What Can The NSA Do

[Anthony Townsend]

Check out the very cool map



Eavesdropping 101: What Can The NSA Do? (1/31/2006)

 
Eavesdropping 101: What Can The NSA Do? (Print Version)
The recent revelations about illegal eavesdropping on American citizens by
the U.S. National Security Agency have raised many questions about just what
the agency is doing. Although the facts are just beginning to emerge,
information that has come to light about the NSA's activities and
capabilities over the years, as well as the recent reporting by the New York
Times and others, allows us to discern the outlines of what they are likely
doing and how they are doing it.

The NSA is not only the world's largest spy agency (far larger than the CIA,
for example), but it possesses the most advanced technology for intercepting
communications. We know it has long had the ability to focus powerful
surveillance capabilities on particular individuals or communications. But
the current scandal has indicated two new and significant elements of the
agency's eavesdropping:

   1. The NSA has gained direct access to the telecommunications
infrastructure through some of America's largest companies
   2. The agency appears to be not only targeting individuals, but also
using broad "data mining" systems that allow them to intercept and evaluate
the communications of millions of people within the United States.


The ACLU has prepared a map illustrating how all this is believed to work.
It shows how the military spying agency has extended its tentacles into much
of the U.S. civilian communications infrastructure, including, it appears,
the "switches" through which international and some domestic communications
are routed, Internet exchange points, individual telephone company central
facilities, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). While we cannot be
certain about these secretive links, this chart shows a representation of
what is, according to recent reports, the most likely picture of what is
going on.

CORPORATE BEDFELLOWS
One major new element of the NSA's spying machinery is its ability to tap
directly into the major communications switches, routing stations, or access
points of the telecommunications system. For example, according to the New
York Times, the NSA has worked with "the leading companies" in the
telecommunications industry to collect communications patterns, and has
gained access "to switches that act as gateways" at "some of the main
arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the
United States."(1)

This new level of direct access apparently includes both some of the
gateways through which phone calls are routed, as well as other key nodes
through which a large proportion of Internet traffic passes. This new
program also recognizes that today's voice and Internet communications
systems are increasingly converging, with a rising proportion of even voice
phone calls moving to the Internet via VOIP, and parts of the old telephone
transmission system being converted to fiber optic cable and used for both
data and voice communications. While data and voice sometimes travel
together and sometimes do not, and we do not know exactly which "switches"
and other access points the NSA has tapped, what appears certain is that the
NSA is looking at both.

And most significantly, access to these "switches" and other network hubs
give the agency access to a direct feed of all the communications that pass
through them, and the ability to filter, sift through, analyze, read, or
share those communications as it sees fit.


DATA MINING
The other major novelty in the NSA's activities appears to be the
exploitation of a new concept in surveillance that has attracted a lot of
attention in the past few years: what is commonly called "data mining."
Unlike the agency's longstanding practice of spying on specific individuals
and communications based upon some source of suspicion, data mining involves
formula-based searches through mountains of data for individuals whose
behavior or profile is in some way suspiciously different from the norm.

Data mining is a broad dragnet. Instead of targeting you because you once
received a telephone call from a person who received a telephone call from a
person who is a suspected terrorist, you might be targeted because the NSA's
computers have analyzed your communications and have determined that they
contain certain words or word combinations, addressing information, or other
factors with a frequency that deviates from the average, and which they have
decided might be an indication of suspiciousness. The NSA has no prior
reason to suspect you, and you are in no way tied to any other suspicious
individuals ­ you have just been plucked out of the crowd by a computer
algorithm's analysis of your behavior.

Use of these statistical fishing expeditions has been made possible by the
access to communications streams granted by key corporations. The NSA may
also be engaging in "geographic targeting," in which they listen in on
comm

[telecom-cities] (home automation) Lights. Mood. Video. All at the Touch of a Screen. - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/technology/circuits/02security.html

February 2, 2006
Basics
Lights. Mood. Video. All at the Touch of a Screen.
By MICHEL MARRIOTT

Vincent Aita, a partner in a Chicago-based hedge fund firm who does
considerable work in New York, bought a two-bedroom apartment overlooking
the Chelsea section of Manhattan last year. But before he moved in, he
commissioned a months-long makeover complete with new floors, a sleek new
kitchen and an updated open profile where there were once walls.

And naturally, he said he thought at the time, he wanted a simple means to
control all the consumer electronic goodies he planned to buy to equip his
new home.

These days when he enters his home, a touch on a compact, wall-mounted
L.C.D. screen just inside his front door lights up his apartment like a
department store. Once inside, another touch on a larger portable screen
commands his 61-inch high-definition television and multi-channel sound
system to stand by as he readies a favorite DVD.

Another tap of a screen or a button on what looks like a conventional remote
control, and Mr. Aita's living room falls into a cozy twilight, perfect, he
said, to enjoy a good film at home ‹ controlled, of course, with the same
fingertip ease as practically everything else in his apartment.

"The system is mostly intuitive," said Mr. Aita, who is 32 years old and has
an evident penchant for order. "I was fortunate that this particular
technology was available when I was looking for it."

In Mr. Aita's case, the technology comes by way of a system built by
Control4, a home automation company based in Salt Lake City. The company
aims to produce affordable security products that are easy to use and can be
installed after homes are built. Control4 is hardly alone in its attempt to
make home automation as much a part of high-tech American homes as
flat-panel televisions.

The promise of a remote control home has buzzed around consumers' ears for
decades, but never seemed to materialize for mainstream households. Most
Americans have had to behold home automation from afar, featured in magazine
spreads on televised tours of the homes of the well-heeled.

But just as flat-panel television prices have significantly fallen in the
last year, so have the costs of putting a home's operations under a
fingertip's control, many home automation makers and installers say. Even
basic functions ‹ like central control of all of a home's music, movies and
television, with atmospheric lighting ‹ now cost hundreds rather than
thousands of dollars, said Craig Cohen, president of Compushine, the New
York company that installed Mr. Aita's system.

Mr. Cohen said earlier home-automation systems could routinely cost $70,000
to $300,000. Mr. Aita said his Control4 system cost about $10,000.

One advantage of the newer systems, users note, is that they are modular. As
a result, once the central control unit is installed, additional modules ‹
usually wirelessly linked ‹ may be added according to the homeowner's needs
and budget.

Mr. Aita said his system's main control unit cost $2,300, the in-wall touch
screens $700 each, the hand-held remote controls $100 each and the wireless
light switches $100 apiece.

An integrated controller with CD player, MP3 server, with FM, AM and
satellite radio cost about $5,000, he said.

Not everyone, of course, is a hedge fund partner. But even those on small
budgets can take advantage of falling prices. Kurt Scherf, the principal
analyst and vice president of Parks Associates, a market research and
consulting company based in Dallas, noted that a home starter kit he found
at Home Depot, consisting of a controller and enough modules to control at
least four lights wirelessly, cost as little as $100.

"The technologies to allow for low-cost and hassle-free installation and
reliability have come a long way since the 1970's, when people first stared
talking about the possibility of home control and home management," he said.

Many of the innovations transforming home automation, industry executives
and analysts say, are possible because of steady improvements in wireless
technologies and home Internet access. Last month at the Consumer
Electronics Show, the annual Las Vegas showcase of new high-tech products
heading to market, companies like Control4 and Lutron Electronics
prominently displayed a new class of affordable home automation systems.

Most of the new products rely on wireless links that connect the hub of a
home security system with various modules, like those that control power
outlets and light switches. One of the newest wireless protocols, ZigBee,
also called 802.15.4b, is designed specifically for integration with home
and office networks.

ZigBee is capable of two-way communications, an advantage over many earlier
systems that were only one-way. With a two-way link, remotely controlling a
light in the basement, for example, becomes less of an act of faith; a
signal can be sent back to confirm 

[telecom-cities] Korean infants on the Internet

[Anthony Townsend]

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200602/200602020014.html

Half of Korea¹s Preschoolers Use Internet Daily

Internet use among preschoolers between three and five is no longer limited
to a handful of prodigies, an astounding government survey suggests. If the
figures are to be believed, some 48 percent or 870,000 children in that age
bracket used the Internet daily in the second half of last year.

The Information and Communication Ministry conducted the survey together
with the National Internet Development Agency of Korea. It found that
Internet use among five-year-olds surveyed was 64 percent, among
four-year-olds 47 percent and among three-year-olds 34 percent. Young
children on average started using the Internet at 3.2 years of age and spent
on average 4.8 hours a week online.

Some 93 percent of the diminutive respondents used the Internet to play
games or access music, but 39 percent used the web for ³study,² the survey
finds.

The survey was conducted on 18,683 people in 7,076 households nationwide,
with the confidence level of 95 percent and the margin error of ±0.61
percent. 

[telecom-cities] What unique things would people do with citywide Wi-Fi?

[Anthony Townsend]

Hey all -

I'm starting to get curious about what kinds of things we might anticipate
people doing/wanting to do with a ubiquitous citywide wi-fi network that's
different from what they do at hotspots today... Surfing the web, checking
mail, etc.

Mobile VoIP phones, etc of course.

But are there experiments, or discussions going out there that are taking
this whole municipal wireless debate to the higher level?

I'm coming at this from 2 angles -

1-I think the muni wireless advocates only have a compelling case because of
slow wired bband rollout and low cost. It would be nice if there were some
compelling, unique use cases

2-I think the entry of municipal governments has sucked a lot of the
innovative and creative energy out of the community wireless movement. Its
all become about infrastructure, when before this muni wireless surge
started, it was starting to become all about creative applications. I want
to refocus some attention on new applications

Thanks

[telecom-cities] ABC News: Los Angeles Police to Test GPS Darts

[Anthony Townsend]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1576247

Runaway Cars Tagged to Stop Chases
Los Angeles Police to Test GPS Darts
By CHARLOTTE SECTOR

Feb. 3, 2005 ‹ - A paintball-like technology could end car chases in Los
Angeles, and maybe across the country, if a system being tested in Southern
California delivers what the company that makes it promises.

The Los Angeles Police Department is testing a new secret weapon to halt
high-speed pursuits: smart darts.

The LAPD will use air-propelled miniature baseball size "tags" equipped with
a global positioning system. The officers fire the darts, which stick to a
fleeing motorist's car, and within minutes can find and track the suspect's
location.

"There is a social need for better managing of high-speed pursuits," said
Mandy McCall, chief operating officer at StarChase, the inventor of the
vehicle tagging and tracking Pursuit Management System.

Car chases, a staple on cable news channels, often end in deadly outcomes.
Last year alone, there were more than 600 pursuits in Los Angeles and more
than 100,000 nationwide.

McCall said that because of a business partner's death in a long police
pursuit, one of the co-founders of StarChase dedicated himself to finding a
way to put an end to the chases that endanger the police and bystanders
alike.

Super Glue-like Dart

"We believe this technology and the trials associated with it will
potentially give police officers yet another tool to minimize the damaging
risks associated with high-speed pursuits," Los Angeles Police Department
Chief William Bratton said in a prepared statement.

The LAPD will try out the technology for four to six months, which allows
StarChase to fine-tune its product before it starts selling the "smart
darts" to other law enforcement authorities, McCall said.

The vehicle-mounted compressed air launchers have been tested with the
golf-ball size GPS receivers that come laden with a "highly efficient" gluey
compound guaranteed to stick, McCall said. The tag adheres to the suspect
vehicle and then transmits location coordinates to a central location, where
it is superimposed over a computer map display.

Regardless of whether fleeing drivers realize they have been tagged, it's
unlikely that individuals could unglue the dart.

StarChase has not released prices for its tracking system, but McCall said
that the company would respect municipalities' tight budgets.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

[telecom-cities] The Korea Times : Korea Plans to Build `Mobile Paradise' district

[Anthony Townsend]

Ok... But where

-

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200602/kt2006020817251110440.htm

Korea Plans to Build `Mobile Paradise'


By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter


South Korea plans to construct a ``mobile paradise,'' a special district
next year, where people will be able to enjoy a seamless service from the
world's latest wireless technologies.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) Wednesday revealed the
grandiose scheme, dubbed the M1 (Mobile No. 1) project, as part of its
annual business plan.

``All existing and burgeoning mobile technologies in this planet will be
used in the special district, which will be designated later,'' MIC
assistant minister Suk Ho-ick said.

``The special district is kind of a free technology zone that will create a
new mobile environment. It will play the role of test-bed for up-and-coming
wireless platforms,'' Suk added.

Included in the available techniques will be all mobile broadcasting systems
like DVB-H developed by Nokia, Qualcomm's MediaFlo and the home-grown
digital multimedia broadcasting.

In addition, citizens there will be free to use every next-generation
telecom platform such as time division-synchronous code division multiple
access (TD-SCDMA), WiBro and a global system for mobile communications
(GSM).

Most of the aforementioned platforms have been unavailable in Korea, where
CDMA technology was the mainstream system for wireless communications.

``Korea became a global mobile behemoth thanks to its relentless pursuit of
CDMA, the single national standard, over the past decade. Hereafter, the M1
project will be sure to pave the way for a second-phased growth,'' Suk
expected.

Under the bold scheme, the ministry aims at achieving 100-percent mobile
literacy here as well as substantially expanding the country's presence in
the global market.

``We are seeking to supply roughly 30 percent of the global market for
mobile terminals and approximately half of the components market by 2010,''
he noted.

Upgraded Growth Scheme

Besides the mobile special district venture, the MIC decided to upgrade its
growth strategy.

In 2004, the ministry phased in a new growth tactic of nurturing eight new
services, three infrastructures and nine hardware-related businesses under
the title IT839.

Then, it streamlined the long-term plan, rearranging its portfolio _ adding
new prominent growth phases like IT services and radio tags to the lineup _
and re-titled the plan u-IT839

``This new project will enable us to crank out products worth 576 trillion
won by 2010 and create additional values of 266 trillion won by the cited
period,'' Suk said.

The MIC is also striving to counter side effects caused by fast-developing
high-tech fields. Toward that end, the ministry earmarked 43.7 billion won
for this year to bridge the widening digital divide, or gaps between
information ``haves'' and ``have-nots.''

The budget will be funneled into such tasks as educating the old, the
disabled or North Korean defectors in the latest information technology (IT)
and mandating the construction of the high-speed Internet network in rural
areas where more than 30 households are located.

In addition, the ministry reaffirmed its promise to start the Internet
real-name system this year to help prevent cyber crime such as libel.

In the first phase, those who post messages on large Web portal sites will
be obliged to use their real names instead of pseudonyms this year.

Critics contend that the real name format will irritate ordinary Web users
while failing to catch elusive Internet criminals. They also argue the plan
violates constitutional rights on free speech.

But a majority of Koreans have sided with the real-name formula as
unscrupulous persons continue to commit crimes in the virtual world, hiding
in their anonymity. 

[telecom-cities] NYCwireless : MuniNetworkApps

[Anthony Townsend]

http://nycwireless.net/MuniNetworkApps

NYCwireless has created a Wiki that allows NYCwireless members to contribute
to a document of ideas on wireless apps for municipal networks...

As of today...

 Uses for Municipal-wide Wireless Networks

Many municipalities are pursuing Municipal Wireless networks. Having a city-
or town-wide network presents a great opportunity to rethink how business,
entertainment, and public services can be enhanced. Sure, we can get email
and web pages anywhere, but what about more novel uses of the network?

Spectropolis is one good example of how a public wireless network can
redefine public art. We're sure there are lots of other great ideas out
there.

This page is the beginning of that brainstorm. We are using it to capture
both ideas for new or updated services that can be provided on top of a
ubiquitous wireless network, as well as highlight community needs that could
be solved using that network.

This is a wiki page, which means that anyone can add or edit anything on the
page. We encourage you to put in your 2 cents. We want everyone to be part
of the discussion!

Ideas

Transportation

BUS KIOSK Content Management System
A bus kiosk or neighborhood bulletin board could serve as an information
point to the community.

"When's the Next Bus?"

* Push bus info to a bus shelter screen. (see lotto ads and lcd ads).
Include newsfeeds and advertising (like in office elevators) Where am I?
* Easy map of neighborhood, based on AP location.


"Street-Level 311"

* Make 311 info available to the kiosk. Make simple 311 forms (comments,
questions complaints). Record location of entry.


"What's open now?"
Show area businesses by hour. What city agencies are in the area? Include
police stations and hours

"Get building history"
Landmarks preservation commission provides content about area landmarks.

"What's going on?"
Street-fairs, festivals, etc.

Directions from here to there

* sites like HopStop can provide directions to and from your current
location, including what public transit lines will get you there.


MNN, PBS broadcasts(?)

Public webcam(?)

For PDAs, Laptops
"Where¹s Street Parking"

* People are constantly trying to find a parking space. This app would
show a map of a neighborhood, highlighting the blocks with red, yellow, and
green indicators showing whether it's ok to park there.


"Street Cleaning Neighborhood Network"

* On Street Cleaning day, people tend to sit in their cars waiting for
the street-cleaner to come. Some work (phone calls, working on their
laptops, etc). Just having a municipal network would give these people
Internet access in their cars while they're waiting.


"Mark my location"

* A simple app that notes your location by where you're sending from
(access point). Can be used as a time clock for field personnel (log into
the access pt). Especially useful for police deployments? Also useful as an
organizing tool (I was here.) and for petitions. Maybe make it hardware
independent. (Log in, validate login from email, and you're verified.)
* Easy map of area, formatted for smart-phone, pda, etc.


Street Level 311

* Format 311 info for laptop, pda, and cellphone. Make simple 311 forms
(comments, questions complaints).


"Show crimes by location"

* Chicago Crime Database


"Check neighborhood phonebook"

* There are a million John Smiths in the naked city. Show me the one
within three blocks of here.


"Fix it!"

* Here's a comprehensive physical breakdown of a public city location
with the ability to quickly navigate and report on the problem area. Report
broken fixtures at parks, safety issues, etc. (social problems: vagrants,
drug use, etc.?) Photo upload and moblog capability.


"Report that cab!"

* A simple, discreet way to send a complaint about a taxi. (SMS the
cabbie id or the cab id to a predefined SMS number. You'll get an email back
directing you to a form to enter more info.)


"ScaffoldWatch"

* Report an unsafe scaffold or an expired scaffold.


"What's that?" (Parks)

* Identify plants and park fixtures. Content provided by park
association. 


"What'd you like to see?" (Parks)

* Options for the next season's plantings.

[telecom-cities] "The Catalogue" Art film vision of RFID surveillance

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.cinematicfilm.com/the%20catalogue.html

Certainly worth a watch Sort of 1984-esque vision of RFID tracking in a
retail setting but interesting and provocative

[telecom-cities] FW: [CUWiN Press Release] Announcing the Second National Summit for Community Wireless Networks -- March 31-April 2, 2006. St. Charles, MO.

[Anthony Townsend]

The first one was a big success

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Sascha Meinrath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:05:19 -0600
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [CUWiN Press Release] Announcing the Second National Summit for
> Community Wireless Networks -- March 31-April 2, 2006.  St. Charles, MO.
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Below is the invite to the Second National Summit for Community Wireless
> Networks that we're hosting right outside St. Louis March 31-April 2, 2006.
> We
> rely on word-of-mouth to get the word out about this event, so please forward
> this out to your friends and relevant e-mail lists.  Links to the Summit
> website
> and registration are also below.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> --Sascha
> 
> *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD ***
> *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD ***
> *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD *** *** PLEASE FORWARD ***
> 
> The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), Mid-Rivers Community
> Wireless Network, and Free Press invite you to join us for a Community
> Wireless
> Networking Summit, March 31-April 2, 2006 in St. Charles, MO (right outside
> St.
> Louis).  "Imagine & Implement: The 2006 National Summit for Community Wireless
> Networks" will focus on grassroots action; impacting national regulations and
> policies; and building the coalition of community groups, researchers, policy
> leaders, decision-makers, and activists working to create better broadband
> services and telecommunications infrastructures.
> 
> With Network Neutrality under attack and broadband service continuing to
> stagnate, it's time we organized to take the public airwaves back from
> corporate
> interests and put the public interest back in the spotlight.  Community
> Wireless
> Networks are often owned by the communities that deploy them and offer better
> services for cheaper prices than traditional ISPs.  Anyone interested in
> making
> the "public interest" the number one priority in broadband service provision
> should definitely attend this summit.
> 
> Community Wireless developers from across North America will be demonstrating
> cutting-edge technologies; researchers and programmers will discuss recent
> breakthroughs and developments; and policy-makers and funders will strategize
> with participants on the new initiatives being launched and how we can make an
> impact in DC.
> 
> More summit information is available online at:
> 
> www.wirelesssummit.org
> 
> Register online at:
> 
> www.wirelesssummit.org/register
> 
> Have questions or want to present?  Send us an e-mail at:
> 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> See you in St. Charles,
> 
> --Sascha Meinrath
> Summit Director
> 
> -- 
> Sascha Meinrath
> Policy Analyst*  Project Coordinator  *  President
> Free Press   *** CUWiN   *** Acorn Active Media
> www.freepress.net *  www.cuwireless.net   *  www.acornactivemedia.com

[telecom-cities] FW: 57.5% of Japanese Wallet Phone Users have some concerns

[Anthony Townsend]

> Subject: 57.5% Wallet Phone Users have some concerns
> 
> Email service company [1]ishare and Softbank Creative together did a survey on
> mobile phone usage. The questions included ones that asked about RFID-chipped
> wallet phones. 
> 
> Among the people who have RFID-chipped mobile phones
> - 23% actually used the wallet phone service and
> - 57.5% said they have some concerns about the wallet phone service
> 
> Among the 718 people who responded to the servey, 72% were male and 28% were
> female. 
> 
> via [2]nikkeibp, February 10, 2006 (in Japanese)
> 
> konomi http://ubiks.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2006-02-11T08:32:54Z

[telecom-cities] Why The Economy Is A Lot Stronger Than You Think: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

[Anthony Townsend]

Re knowledge economy



http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/060203/b3971001.html?.v=2

BusinessWeek Online
Why The Economy Is A Lot Stronger Than You Think
Friday February 3, 4:00 pm ET
By Michael Mandel, with Steve Hamm in New York and Christopher J. Farrell in
St. Paul, Minn.

You read this magazine religiously, watch CNBC while dressing for work, scan
the Web for economic reports. You've heard, over and over, about the
underlying problems with the U.S. economy -- the paltry investment rate, the
yawning current account deficit, the pathetic amount Americans salt away.
And you know what the experts are saying: that the U.S. faces a perilous
economic future unless we cut back on spending and change our profligate
ways.

But what if we told you that the doomsayers, while not definitively wrong,
aren't seeing the whole picture? What if we told you that businesses are
investing about $1 trillion a year more than the official numbers show? Or
that the savings rate, far from being negative, is actually positive? Or,
for that matter, that our deficit with the rest of the world is much smaller
than advertised, and that gross domestic product may be growing faster than
the latest gloomy numbers show? You'd be pretty surprised, wouldn't you?

Well, don't be. Because the economy you thought you knew -- the one all
those government statistics purport to measure and make rational and
understandable -- actually may be on a stronger footing than you think. Then
again, it could be much more volatile than before, with bigger booms and
deeper busts. If true, that has major implications for policymakers -- not
least Ben Bernanke, who on Feb. 1 succeeded Alan Greenspan as chairman of
the Federal Reserve.

Everyone knows the U.S. is well down the road to becoming a knowledge
economy, one driven by ideas and innovation. What you may not realize is
that the government's decades-old system of number collection and crunching
captures investments in equipment, buildings, and software, but for the most
part misses the growing portion of GDP that is generating the cool,
game-changing ideas. "As we've become a more knowledge-based economy," says
University of Maryland economist Charles R. Hulten, "our statistics have not
shifted to capture the effects."

The statistical wizards at the Bureau of Economic Analysis in Washington can
whip up a spreadsheet showing how much the railroads spend on furniture ($39
million in 2004, to be exact). But they have no way of tracking the billions
of dollars companies spend each year on innovation and product design,
brand-building, employee training, or any of the other intangible
investments required to compete in today's global economy. That means that
the resources put into creating such world-beating innovations as the
anticancer drug Avastin, inhaled insulin, Starbuck's (NasdaqNM:SBUX - News),
exchange-traded funds, and yes, even the iPod, don't show up in the official
numbers.

Now, a generation of economists who came of professional age watching the
dot-com boom and bust are trying to get a grip on this shadow economy:
People like Carol A. Corrado and Daniel E. Sichel of the Federal Reserve
Board, who, along with Hulten, figured out that businesses are spending much
more on future-oriented investments than widely believed. In a way, these
economists are disciples of Greenspan, who understood earlier than most that
the conventional numbers don't capture the emerging knowledge economy.

Greenspan was continually digging into arcane factoids he hoped would give
him a better insight into what was going on under the hood of the U.S.
economy. And Bernanke seems to understand the importance of doing the same.
In a speech last year, he said that intangible investments "appear to be
quantitatively important." As a result, Bernanke noted, "aggregate saving
and investment may be significantly understated in the U.S. official
statistics."

Beyond Widgets
As Greenspan would be the first to tell you, it's a lot easier counting how
many widgets the nation produces in a year than quantifying the creation and
marketing of knowledge. After all, we're talking about intangibles: brand
equity, the development of talent, the export of best practices.

This stuff is hard to measure, but to ignore it is to miss what the economy
is telling us. And to miss that is to increase the likelihood of committing
policy blunders. Including these intangible investments could provide a
better picture of the economy, one that offers more advance warning of
recessions, slippage in our ability to innovate, and other nasty surprises.

To understand why the government measures the economy the way it does, it
helps to go back in time to the 1930s. The Great Depression had the nation
in a death grip, and government planners and politicians lacked the tools to
answer the big question of the day: Was the economy getting better or worse?
To find out, the Commerce Dept. brought in economist Simon Kuznets , then at
the National Bureau of Econom

[telecom-cities] US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

from the February 09, 2006 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html

US plans massive data sweep
Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails.
Will it go too far?

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect
huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and
e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns
of terrorist activity.

The system - parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under
development - is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the
federal government's latest attempt to use broad data-collection and
powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into
the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns
that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens' privacy.

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like
buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces
everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots.
But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and
aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about. It's one of the
underlying fundamental issues we have yet to come to grips with."

The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis,
Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE).
Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development
program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its
three-year-old "Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment" portfolio.
The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.

DHS officials are circumspect when talking about ADVISE. "I've heard of it,"
says Peter Sand, director of privacy technology. "I don't know the actual
status right now. But if it's a system that's been discussed, then it's
something we're involved in at some level."
Data-mining is a key technology

A major part of ADVISE involves data-mining - or "dataveillance," as some
call it. It means sifting through data to look for patterns. If a
supermarket finds that customers who buy cider also tend to buy fresh-baked
bread, it might group the two together. To prevent fraud, credit-card
issuers use data-mining to look for patterns of suspicious activity.

What sets ADVISE apart is its scope. It would collect a vast array of
corporate and public online information - from financial records to CNN news
stories - and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement
records. The system would then store it as "entities" - linked data about
people, places, things, organizations, and events, according to a report
summarizing a 2004 DHS conference in Alexandria, Va. The storage
requirements alone are huge - enough to retain information about 1
quadrillion entities, the report estimated. If each entity were a penny,
they would collectively form a cube a half-mile high - roughly double the
height of the Empire State Building.

But ADVISE and related DHS technologies aim to do much more, according to
Joseph Kielman, manager of the TVTA portfolio. The key is not merely to
identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical
patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions, he wrote in a
presentation at a November conference in Richland, Wash.

For example: Is a burst of Internet traffic between a few people the
plotting of terrorists, or just bloggers arguing? ADVISE algorithms would
try to determine that before flagging the data pattern for a human analyst's
review.

At least a few pieces of ADVISE are already operational. Consider Starlight,
which along with other "visualization" software tools can give human
analysts a graphical view of data. Viewing data in this way could reveal
patterns not obvious in text or number form. Understanding the relationships
among people, organizations, places, and things - using social-behavior
analysis and other techniques - is essential to going beyond mere
data-mining to comprehensive "knowledge discovery in databases," Dr. Kielman
wrote in his November report. He declined to be interviewed for this
article.
One data program has foiled terrorists

Starlight has already helped foil some terror plots, says Jim Thomas, one of
its developers and director of the government's new National Visualization
Analytics Center in Richland, Wash. He can't elaborate because the cases are
classified, he adds. But "there's no question that the technology we've
invented here at the lab has been used to protect our freedoms - and that's
pretty cool."

As envisioned, ADVISE and its analytical tools would be used by other
agencies to look for terrorists

[telecom-cities] InfoWeek - "Google, VW Developing In-Car Navigation System"

[Anthony Townsend]

February 03, 2006

Google, VW Developing In-Car Navigation System

By Antone Gonsalves Courtesy of TechWeb News

Google Inc. and Volkswagen of America Inc. are developing an in-car
navigation system that displays a photo-quality view of a route, instead of
the typical line drawings found in current systems.

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp. is also part of the project, which has
produced a prototype that was shown in last month's Consumer Electronics
Show in Las Vegas, Nev. The three companies are hoping that consumers will
take to seeing pictures of the stores, houses and office buildings they pass
en route to a particular location.

Arne Stoschek, head of displays and sensor materials at Vokswagen's
Electronic Research Lab in Palo Alto, Calif., said current navigation
systems that present road maps and display directions are not the optimal
way for helping people find a store in a shopping mall.

"It's not the way we actually perceive the environment," Stoschek said. "A
photo representation of the surrounding environment with respect to the car
is a much better way for navigation."

Rather than having to hunt for a toy store in an outdoor mall, VW drivers
would be able to see the retailer's building, Stoschek said.

Neal Polachek, analyst for The Kelsey Group, said it was "premature" to say
whether Google and Volkswagen, based in Auburn Hills, Mich., have a winner.
The latter company declined to say when the navigation system would be
available in cars, saying only that it planned to continue demonstrating the
prototype at shows.

"The concept is interesting, but what happens in 12 months? Who knows?"
Polachek said, noting that it's not unusual for projects to fizzle.

"Visuals of locations, however, would be very compelling. They would present
a better experience than just maps," Polachek said.

Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., would provide the search engine for
retrieving information from the Web to overlay on the photos, Stoschek said.
Using the system's touch screen, a driver could search for the closest gas
station, for example, and get back a list of several on a photo of the
surrounding area, along with the price of gasoline at the different
locations.
The 3-D display would come from Google Earth, which combines road maps with
satellite imagery of locations. The service is available for a computer
through a software download from Google.

To use the system, a driver would type in the destination, and the system
would offer the best route, based on traffic conditions, Stoschek said. A
red arrow would direct the driver through streets or highways.

The driver also would have the option of previewing the route, which could
be helpful before taking that road trip for the weekend.

"With this kind of system, you could see the hotel where you're staying,
instead of just getting directions from A to B," Stoschek said.

The car would be equipped with a global positioning system, so the
navigation unit would always know the time and location of the vehicle.

The satellite photos used would not be pictures taken within minutes.
Instead, the photos would have been taken several weeks before and retrieved
over the Internet from a database, Stoschek said. Pictures taken within the
last 30 days or so would be acceptable.

"Buildings don't change much in a month," Stoschek said.

Nevertheless, the information received would still be timelier then the
street maps used by drivers in most car-navigation systems today, which
display information from CDs, Stoschek said.

[telecom-cities] Daily Wireless - Intelligent Transportation Gets 802.11p

[Anthony Townsend]

http://dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2815&src=rss
09

Intelligent Transportation Gets 802.11p
Posted on Thursday, 2004 July 15 @ 09:22:56 PDT

The 802.11p protocol, which enables motor-vehicle communications, is due to
come before the executive committee of the IEEE (agenda) in Portland, Ore.
this week.

The IEEE 802.11p Task Group was established for Wireless Access in Vehicular
Environments (WAVE). The Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) is a
general purpose communications link between the vehicle and the roadside (or
between vehicles) using the 802.11p protocol. ABI estimates that this sort
of vehicular communications could see initial expenditures of $1 billion
shortly. ITS America stressed the need to support the adoption of a single
nationwide standard in the FCC rules

The new 802.11p protocol, just months old, improves on the range and speed
of transmission on the dedicated 5.9 GHz licensed band, promising around
1,000 feet and 6 Mbit/s in average use, say reports. The vehicular
communications protocol is aimed at vehicles, such as toll collection,
vehicle safety services, and commerce transactions via cars. The US
government is pushing forward to cover the highways with access points that
support this new type of extra-secure hotspots, that ride over 5.9 GHz.

³Prototypes are under construction right now,² says Lee Armstrong, chair of
the 802.11p working group, of implementation of the protocol in chips.
Meanwhile, he says, auto manufacturers are due to install chips‹initally in
high-end vehicles‹in the 2007 or 2008 time frame.

Tracking the comings and goings of vehicles is bound to have privacy issues.
DailyWireless asked one 802.11p representative about that. He said the
solution that companies are offering is a legal framework that would prevent
databases from being freely distributed. Hummsounds like the MATRIX.
Ubiquitous wireless networking will enable vehicle tracking even RF-ID
interregation as you go.

A representative from Denso told DailyWireless yesterday, that 802.11p is a
greenfield of potential. Denso has developed car navigation systems for
Toyota and Mercedes.

Toyota plans an on-board G-BOOK terminal this fall. The automotive PDA will
feature a Data Communications Module and a Secure Digital card, enabling
customers to take advantage of the latest network services as easily as they
would operate a car radio.

Fiat Auto and Microsoft today announced a long-term strategic automotive
partnership to develop innovative telematics solutions for motorists.
Microsoft's Automotive Business Unit has a Windows Automotive platform that
includes Bluetooth, WiFi and 802.1x wireless technologies, with rich
multimedia content delivery capabilities.

Of course there are a few bugs in the Connected Car. A Thai finance
minister, for example, on his way to a meeting became trapped in his car
when the onboard computer of his BMW malfunctioned, shutting down the
engine, locking all the doors and windows, and sealing him and his driver
inside. NPR tells the funny tale of the Win CE-equipped BMWi (ram).

Since this is a new frequency band and a new range of services, we thought
802.11p would be clear of political baggage. "Not entirely," explained our
expert.

Still, vehicular communications, with a fresh band (above) and new
applications, is largely free of the bickering and block voting typified by
the rolling 802.15.3a disaster. Motorola effectively prevented the IEEE from
gaining a 75% majority in MultiBand Ultra Wideband so they could promote
their first-to-market solution, claim many at the IEEE meeting.

This sort of block voting is supposed to be illegal. The IEEE gives "one
man, one vote". This results, Motorola competitors say, in loading the
voting sessions to prevent an IEEE standard from developing around MultiBand
Ultra Wideband. Motorola, one competitor grouses, "spent $50K sending
employees and friends to vote for their "standard". Now consumers will find
their Motorola cell phones or Cable boxes using Ultra Wide Band won't
communicate with other UWB devices.

This sort of incompatibility and fragmentation is what the IEEE was supposed
to prevent. 

[telecom-cities] Biotech's Sparse Harvest - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

While we're on tangents...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/business/14gene.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

February 14, 2006
Biotech's Sparse Harvest
By ANDREW POLLACK

At the dawn of the era of genetically engineered crops, scientists were
envisioning all sorts of healthier and tastier foods, including
cancer-fighting tomatoes, rot-resistant fruits, potatoes that would produce
healthier French fries and even beans that would not cause flatulence.

But so far, most of the genetically modified crops have provided benefits
mainly to farmers, by making it easier for them to control weeds and
insects.

Now, millions of dollars later, the next generation of biotech crops ‹ the
first with direct benefits for consumers ‹ is finally on the horizon. But
the list does not include many of the products once envisioned.

Developing such crops has proved to be far from easy. Resistance to
genetically modified foods, technical difficulties, legal and business
obstacles and the ability to develop improved foods without genetic
engineering have winnowed the pipeline.

"A lot of companies went into shell shock, I would say, in the past three,
four years," said C. S. Prakash, director of plant biotechnology research at
Tuskegee University. "Because of so much opposition, they've had to put a
lot of projects on the shelf."

Developing nonallergenic products and other healthful crops has also proved
to be difficult technically. "Changing the food composition is going to be
far trickier than just introducing one gene to provide insect resistance,"
said Mr. Prakash, who has promoted agricultural biotechnology on behalf of
the industry and the United States government.

In 2002, Eliot Herman and his colleagues got some attention when they
engineered a soybean to make it less likely to cause an allergic reaction.
But the soybean project was put aside because baby food companies, which he
thought would want the soybeans for infant formula, instead are avoiding
biotech crops, said Mr. Herman, a scientist with the Department of
Agriculture.

In addition, he said, food companies feared lawsuits if some consumers
developed allergic reactions to a product labeled as nonallergenic.

The next generation of these crops ‹ particularly those that provide
healthier or tastier food ‹ could be important for gaining consumer
acceptance of genetic engineering. The industry won a victory last week when
a panel of the World Trade Organization ruled that the European Union had
violated trade rules by halting approvals of new biotech crops. But the
ruling is not expected to overcome the wariness of European consumers over
biotech foods.

New crops are also important for the industry, which has been peddling the
same two advantages ‹ herbicide tolerance and insect resistance ‹ for 10
years. "We haven't seen any fundamentally new traits in a while," said
Michael Fernandez, executive director of the Pew Initiative on Food and
Biotechnology, a nonprofit group.

Now, some new types of crops are appearing. Monsanto just won federal
approval for a type of genetically engineered corn promoted as having
greater nutritional value ‹ albeit only for pigs and poultry. The corn,
possessing a bacterial gene, contains increased levels of lysine, an amino
acid that is often provided to farm animals as a supplement.

Coming next, industry executives say, are soybean oils intended to yield
healthier baked goods and fried foods. To keep soybean oil from turning
rancid, the oil typically undergoes a process called hydrogenation. The
process produces trans fatty acids, which are harmful and must be disclosed
in food labels under new regulations.

Both Monsanto and DuPont, which owns the Pioneer Hi-Bred seed company, have
developed soybeans with altered oil composition that, in some cases, do not
require hydrogenation. Kellogg said in December that it would use the
products, particularly Monsanto's, to remove trans fats from some of its
products.

Monsanto's product, Vistive, and DuPont's, which is called Nutrium, were
developed by conventional breeding. They are genetically engineered only in
the sense that they have the gene that allows them to grow even when sprayed
with the widely used herbicide Roundup.

But Monsanto and DuPont say the next generation of soybean, which would be
able to eliminate trans fats in more foods, would probably require genetic
engineering. Those products are expected in three to six years.

Beyond that, both companies said, would be soybeans high in omega-3 fatty
acids, which are good for the heart and the brain. These are now derived
largely from eating fish, which in turn get them by eating algae. Putting
algae genes into soybeans could allow for soy oil that is rich in the fatty
acids.

"Our hope is it is easier to formulate into food without it smelling or
tasting fishy," said David M. Stark, vice president for consumer traits at
Monsanto.

Other second-generation crops are also on the way. DuPont is trying to
develop better tasting soy for us

[telecom-cities] FW: Virtual globes

[Anthony Townsend]

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Smart Mobs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:35:47 +0800

> This editorial in Nature says 'millions of people across the world are zooming
> in from space,flying across continents,and swooping over mountains and through
> cities,thanks to Google Earth,NASA's World Wind and other free virtual
> globes.The ability to model the Earth in exquisite three-dimensional detail
> was previously only approached on the desktops of professional users of
> geographical information systems (GIS).But even they were unable to publish
> high-resolution globes on the Internet,because of the sheer volume of the
> data,a globe with a resolution of one metre would take years to download using
> even a fast Internet connection.Virtual globes overcome this problem with
> elegant engineering, using a tiling structure that sends progressively
> higher-resolution data as one zooms in.This and other tricks drastically
> reduce the size of file transfers,and allow visualization with almost zero
> latency on a decent broadband connection.Scientists are already experimenting
> with these tools to showcase their research to the public in visually
> appealing ways and to speed responses to natural disasters.Ultimately,such
> accurate digital representations promise to anchor and unify much digital
> information about the Earth,while also helping to integrate the efforts of
> researchers from many disciplines".
> 
> Think global 
>  


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[telecom-cities] 3 reports on urban surveillance - Chicago, Houston, Santa Monica

[Anthony Townsend]

Wednesday, February 15, 2006 · Last updated 4:14 p.m. PT

Houston eyes cameras at apartment complexes

By PAM EASTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

HOUSTON -- Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance
cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and even
private homes to fight crime during a shortage of police officers.

"I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to
that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about
it?" Chief Harold Hurtt told reporters Wednesday at a regular briefing.

Houston is facing a severe police shortage because of too many retirements
and too few recruits, and the city has absorbed 150,000 hurricane evacuees
who are filling apartment complexes in crime-ridden neighborhoods. The City
Council is considering a public safety tax to pay for more officers.

Building permits should require malls and large apartment complexes to
install surveillance cameras, Hurtt said. And if a homeowner requires
repeated police response, it is reasonable to require camera surveillance of
the property, he said.

Scott Henson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Police
Accountability Project in Texas, called Hurtt's building-permit proposal
"radical and extreme" and said it may violate the Fourth Amendment's
protections against unreasonable searches.

Andy Teas with the Houston Apartment Association said that although some
would consider cameras an invasion of privacy, "I think a lot of people
would appreciate the thought of extra eyes looking out for them."

Such cameras are costly, Houston Mayor Bill White said, "but on the other
hand we spend an awful lot for patrol presence." He called the chief's
proposal a "brainstorm" rather than a decision.

The program would require City Council approval.



Surveillance Cameras To Monitor Santa Monica Promenade, Pier

POSTED: 7:56 am PST February 15, 2006
UPDATED: 8:16 am PST February 15, 2006

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade is the latest
public place that will soon apparently be under the watchful eye of police
surveillance cameras.

Tuesday night the Santa Monica City Council has given the green light for a
new video surveillance system at the 3rd Street Promenade and the Santa
Monica Pier.

The video cameras will monitor areas visited by thousands of people.

City officials say they decided on the plan after suspicious people took
pictures of some of the facilities there.

"Some men were videotaping in a manner that was inconsistent with tourist
photography. They were photographing access roads and security structures,"
said Chief James Butts with the Santa Monica Police Department.

The system will go online as soon as the cameras and recording system are
installed.

--

Daley wants security cameras at bars
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
CHICAGO ‹ Surveillance cameras ‹ aimed at government buildings, train
platforms and intersections here ‹ might soon be required at corner taverns
and swanky nightclubs.
A police camera, mounted with a microphone, can detect the sound of gunshots
within a two-block radius. A police camera, mounted with a
microphone, can detect the sound of gunshots within a two-block radius.
File photo/AP

Mayor Richard Daley wants to require bars open until 4 a.m. to install
security cameras that can identify people entering and leaving the building.
Other businesses open longer than 12 hours a day, including convenience
stores, eventually would have to do the same.

Daley's proposed city ordinance adds a dimension to security measures
installed after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The proliferation of security cameras ‹ especially if the government
requires them in private businesses ‹ troubles some civil liberties
advocates.

"There is no reason to mandate all of those cameras unless you one day see
them being linked up to the city's 911 system," says Ed Yohnka of the
Illinois American Civil Liberties Union. "We have perhaps reached that
moment of critical mass when people ... want to have a dialogue about how
much of this is appropriate."

Milwaukee is considering requiring cameras at stores that have called police
three or more times in a year. The Baltimore County Council in Maryland
ordered large malls to put cameras in parking areas after a murder in one
garage last year. The measure passed despite objections from business
groups.

"We require shopping centers to put railings on stairs and install sprinkler
systems for public safety. This is a proper next step," says Baltimore
County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz, who sponsored the ordinance.

Some cities aren't going along. Schenectady, N.Y., shelved a proposal that
would have required cameras in convenience stores.

"The safer we make the city, the better it is for everyone," says Chicago
Alderman Ray Suarez, who first proposed mandatory cameras in some
businesses. "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry
about?"

Nick Novich, o

[telecom-cities] The economic weight of the blogs | Emerging Technology Trends | ZDNet.com

[Anthony Townsend]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=162

The economic weight of the blogs

Posted by Roland Piquepaille @ 5:58 am

If you're one of the millions of active bloggers, you probably think that
your own publication is one of the most important ones in the world. And
from your point of view, you're certainly right. But have blogs changed the
global economy? Only marginally, and in a minuscule way. Companies selling
blogging tools and related services made tiny amounts of money. The
advertising market grew up only slightly. And companies just added another
communication tool to their arsenal. That's about all. Blogs represent just
a very small drop into the big ocean of the IT and the media worlds.

So what exactly is the economic impact of the millions of blogs? Let me
provide some answers, like a research company would do, except I haven't
seen many studies about this particular aspect. And like the research firms,
my estimations below are almost certainly wrong.

In this column, I'll look at the different actors of the blogging world: the
companies that sell publishing tools; the advertising market; the consumer
market; and the impact on companies.

Let's start by the number of blogs worldwide. Are there 10, 30 or 100
million bloggers today? Assuming that 10 million blogs are active and that
10% of bloggers pay an annual fee of $50, this represents a worldwide annual
market of $50 million for all the companies selling blogging tools. Even if
I'm off by a factor of two or four, this is a very small amount compared to
the sales of the Microsofts and the Oracles of our world.

Of course, you'll tell me that the blogging world has generated some huge
deals, like the sales of About.com, Topix.net or Weblogs.inc. But in fact,
the acquirers of these companies didn't purchase blogs. They bought networks
giving them access to a market they didn't have to build.

In fact, these companies, such as the New York Times or AOL, found a way ‹
cheap or not, this is not the point ‹ to increase the market for their ads,
where the money is.

But how much additional advertising money was attracted to blogs? The
various programs, such as Google AdSense or Amazon affiliate partnerships,
don't break their numbers by markets, so I just have to make some
assumptions here.

For example, Darren Rowse, the guy behind ProBlogger ‹ and 20 other blogs ‹
conducted an informal survey in November 2005. Of the 1,205 people who
answered ‹ honestly or not ‹ 45 bloggers reported an income in excess of
$10,000 per month, while the vast majority was earning about $10 per month.
If we assume that one million bloggers are making $120 per year, this is an
annual market of $120 million. If we add similar programs ‹ and the money
made by Google and others ‹ the global ad money generated by the blogosphere
almost certainly doesn't exceed one billion dollars in one year.

Besides these numbers, you'll also tell me that the power of the blogs is
far more important than I think and that a few bloggers can almost destroy a
company and its brand. Case in point: Kryptonite and the "bic pen incident."
But have you read this Dave Taylor's column in his Intuitive Life Business
Blog, "Debunking the myth of Kryptonite Locks and the Blogosphere"? In this
interview with Donna Tocci, Public Relations Manager for Kryptonite, you'll
discover that the company was not really affected by the attacks of the
bloggers. But simply put, it takes some days to define a plan for a lock
exchange program.

In other words, is the consumer market affected by blogs? Probably yes, but
once again, only marginally. You might purchase more goods online than two
or three years ago, but not because of blogs. It's just that you feel more
comfortable giving personal information now.

Finally, let's look at the last actor, the corporations. Big companies have
been slow to use blogs for their external communications. Just read "The
Inside Story on Company Blogs," an article published yesterday by
BusinessWeek Online. Here is a short quote.

According to The Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki (a list of blogs
provided by employees about their companies and products), only 22 of the
500 largest U.S. companies operate public blogs from their executive suites.
That amounts to a measly 4.4%.

Of course, companies are also using blogs for their internal communications
and to manage projects. But this is just another technological tool which
just complements the other ones already in use.

As a summary, the blogging phenomenon is just marginal economically
speaking. But bloggers themselves are different because they're writers,
they have a voice and they're real customers of real products.

Now, you're totally free to disagree with me about the power of blogs. So
feel free to post a comment or drop me a line.

Sources: Roland Piquepaille, February 15, 2006; and various web sites



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[telecom-cities] The Korea Times : Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University

[Anthony Townsend]

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200602/kt2006021517494311780.htm

Korea Plans to Build Linux City, University

By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

The Korean government plans to select a city and a university late next
month where open-source software like Linux will become the mainstream
operating programs.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) Wednesday revealed the
scheme of building up the city and university, which will operate as test
beds for the open-source programs.

``We will start to receive applications next week. After screening candidate
cities and universities, the test beds are likely to be decided by late
March,¹¹ MIC director Lee Do-kyu said.

Lee said that the project will be kick-started just after the decision of
the city and university, toward which end the ministry earmarked 4.1 billion
won for this year alone.

``Already many universities and local governments have shown interest in the
project. We expect big-sized entities will join it,¹¹ he added.

The selected government and university will be required to install
open-source software as a main operating infrastructure, for which the MIC
will support with funds and technologies.

In the long run, they will have to migrate most of their desktop and
notebook computers away from the Windows program of Microsoft, the world¹s
biggest maker of software.

``The test beds will prompt other cities and universities to follow suit
through the showcasing of Linux as the major operating system without any
technical glitches and security issues,¹¹ Lee said.

The open-source software refers to an emerging operating system alternative
to the closed-door Windows program of Microsoft, which has flat-out ruled
the global market thus far.

The underlying source codes of the new-type software are basically open to
the public so that programmers from across the world can upgrade them
continually, the strength that the proprietary Windows lacks.

The attempt to create a Linux city is not a first. Munich in Germany plans
to deploy Linux and open-source packages on its 14,000 PCs in place of
Microsoft office automation suites and operating system.

Other cities and governments also look to embrace various open-source
software, which represents freedom and flexibility by nature, to save costs
and increase efficiency.

Korean Move to Linux

In fact, Korea is not a world leader in adopting Linux and other open-source
programs.

Currently, less than 1 percent of desktop PCs are based on Linux in Korea,
much lower than the global median 3 percent. For servers, Linux accounts for
about a fifth of the market here.

The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency wants to increase the rate to 5
percent for desktop PCs and 40 percent for servers by 2010.

``In order to become a genuine software powerhouse, Korea has no choice but
to secure source technologies. We cannot achieve the goal under the command
of dominant closed-source programs,¹¹ said Ko Hyun-jin, president at the
state-backed agency.

To do so, the government will stage a campaign to use Linux. Korea Post, the
nation¹s postal service provider, last year embarked on a four-year program
to install a Linux-based operating system on 4,748 PCs in its 2,800
branches.

The Ministry of Planning and Budget plans to launch 37 state informatization
projects with Linux this year, which would cost approximately 80 billion
won.

A new online information system for schools, dubbed the National Education
Information System (NEIS), also fixed Linux-empowered platform on its 2,331
servers.

The government hopes the test-bed plan will mark a watershed for Linux by
playing a pivotal role in further boosting the standing of the open-source
program here.

``The Linux city and university will be leading the way in bringing software
flexibility to the whole country at a lower cost to the public,¹¹ MIC
director Lee said.



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[telecom-cities] Study of Internet Users in Five Chinese Cities

[Anthony Townsend]

The full study is a PDF that lives at
http://www.markle.org/downloadable_assets/china_final_11_2005.pdf

http://www.markle.org/resources/press_center/press_releases/2005/press_relea
se_11172005.php

November 17, 2005
CHINESE TURN TO INTERNET FOR ENTERTAINMENT AND CONNECTING WITH OTHERS, AS
NUMBER OF BROADBAND CONNECTIONS INCREASE IN CHINA
New Survey in Mainland China Paints a Detailed Picture of Which People are
Using the Internet in China and Why

Click here to download the full survey. (PDF, 1.9 MB)

New York, NY (November 17, 2005) -- The ways in which the Chinese internet
users utilize and think about the Internet are described in a public opinion
survey of Internet use in China. Among the estimated 103 million Internet
users in China*, nearly half are now using broadband connections, an
increase from 41% in 2003. As a result, Chinese Internet users at home and
in offices are spending more time on line each day than they did just two
years ago. Moreover, Chinese Internet users prefer using forms of "instant
messaging" more than email, and they are relying on the internet more
frequently than in the past to make contact with others who share the same
professions, hobbies, and political interests.

The survey, the only major public opinion survey tracking Internet use in
China, has been ongoing since 2000. The survey, a rare Chinese public
opinion poll using a rigorous methodology, found that large majorities of
Chinese believe that certain kinds of Web content, including pornography and
violence, should be controlled. However, only 7.6% believe that political
content on the Internet should be controlled. According to the survey, few
Chinese Internet users are aware of government web sites, despite the
government's increasing investment in such projects. Many Chinese believe
that the Internet will increase political transparency, 48% percent of
Internet users believe that by going on line the Chinese will learn more
about politics, and 60% of users believe the Internet will provide more
opportunities for criticizing the government.

The survey found that early adopters of the Internet in China are younger
than 30, employed, single, live in urban areas, and have higher than average
levels of income and education. University professors, other educators, and
college graduates are using the Internet heavily. Eighty-five percent of the
content which Chinese Internet users explore originates in China. At
present, Internet users make up only eight percent of the population of
mainland China, indicating there is still much room for growth in the use of
the Internet in China, according to the survey

Chinese use the Internet to seek either entertainment or information about
entertainment, as well as to communicate with like-minded people on line.
Chinese Internet users indicate that they go on line for news more than for
anything else, but that much of the news they seek is related to
entertainment.

"In China, to date the Internet has become an "entertainment and
communication highway," but not an "information highway," said Professor Guo
Liang of the Research Center for Social Development of the Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences of Beijing, who conducts the survey with the support of
the Markle Foundation, a New York-based philanthropy which focuses on
information technology." Mainland Chinese use the Internet more for
entertainment and chatting than for seeking information or news or for
working or studying," added Professor Guo at the Brookings Institution in
Washington, DC, where he released the English-language version "Surveying
Internet Usage and Impact in Five Chinese Cities" this morning.

"The Internet is profoundly transforming China's economy and society," said
Jeffrey Bader, director of The Brookings Institution China Initiative. "Guo
Liang is one of the foremost experts in China, both on the technical aspects
of the Internet's operation and on its impact on Chinese life. We are
delighted to have him come to Brookings to present the findings of his
study."

The survey also tracked the kinds of information Chinese seek on the
Internet, and how much they trust such information. While 83.5% of Internet
users seek information on the web, the majority of that information pertains
to entertainment, not traditional news. Only 48% of users believe that
Internet content is reliable, and majorities of Chinese believe that certain
kinds of content on the web should be controlled, including the following
categories of information: pornography (84.7%) violence (72.6%), and "junk
messages" or spam (51.9%).

Among other findings, Professor Guo and his colleagues identified the
following:

* Eighty percent of the surveyed individuals younger than 24 years of
age use the Internet, and 60% to 80% of those 25-29 higher are on line.
* More than 77% of single people are on line.
* Even in large cities, Internet users make up less than 50% of the
population.
* Only 35.5% of Internet users have more than

[telecom-cities] Goocam World Map - Watch the unsuspecting

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.butterfat.net/goocam/

Gotta love it - unprotected streaming webcams found with Google are mapped
to Google maps.


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[telecom-cities] S Korea broadband penetration falling?

[Anthony Townsend]

If this isnt just an aberration in the data, it appears that S Korea is
actually losing broadband subscribers.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0601/

Look about halfway down. 


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[telecom-cities] FW: Cabspotting

[Anthony Townsend]

Sean Savage forwarded this one...

It's sort of like the Real-Time Amsterdam project of 2004 but using cabs
instead of ppl

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Sean Savage
> Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:04:49 -0800
> Subject: Cabspotting
> 
> http://stamen.com/projects/cabspotting/



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[telecom-cities] Om Malik on Broadband : » The New Office Space

[Anthony Townsend]

http://gigaom.com/2006/02/22/the-new-office-space/

By Jackson West.

Forget Palo Alto garages ‹ San Francisco coffee shops are where to get your
startup off the ground. Internet cafes are emerging as an important place to
get work done, hold meetings and network. Since writers, designers,
developers and anyone else who can work from their laptop are going to show
up, you can even recruit talent, publicize your project and even demo your
product for potential users and investors.

On Charter Street, Greg Olsen writes about ³Going Bedouin.² The idea is that
instead of worrying about leases, infrastructure and support staff, a
startup can stay nimble and focused by using third party services and mobile
technology:

By focusing almost exclusively on service-based infrastructure options,
a business could operate as a sort of neo-Bedouin clan - with workers as a
roaming nomadic tribe carrying laptops & cell phones and able to set up shop
wherever there is an Internet connection, chairs, tables, and sources of
caffeine.

My own experience helping to organize the WebZine conference pretty much
echoed this. No office space was rented, communication was primarily through
email lists and a private wiki, and meetings were held at cafes with free
internet, with notes and ideas quickly disseminated to those who couldn¹t
attend. When a contact was needed to help out with services such as
advertising, sponsorships or donations, cell phones came out and calls were
made, and issues were often resolved before the meeting was even over. Even
during the conference itself, local cafes served as press rooms, panel
development forums and, of course, somewhere to get some lunch.

Of course, the business of coffee shops is to sell food and coffee, not to
take the place of VC-run incubator offices. While some have dealt with the
problem of freeloaders by charging for their Wifi, this often turns geeks
away. Coffee to the People in San Francisco¹s Haight-Ashbury is trying to
come up with guidelines, and the issue of coffee shop etiquette is a popular
topic of discussion among digerati. Some cafe owners only share the WEP or
WPA key with paying customers, limit the number of wall jacks to recharge
batteries, or shut down wifi on the weekends to encourage offline
socializing.

Niall Kennedy has proposed a number of ideas for proprietors to keep up
their cash flow and the loyalty of the laptop-toting set. Other services,
such as community office space offered by Coworking, have also begun to
answer the needs of freelancers and small startups who need a place to plug
in. Backoffice wikis, group chat and social calendars also promise to make
it easier for teams of nomads to work as a group even if scattered across
the four corners of the globe.

Here¹s a list of cafes in San Francisco chosen by popular acclaim and
personal recommendation. Any one of them will keep you fueled with caffeine,
connected online and give you a chance to network with fellow travellers.

Ritual Coffee Roasters

This is the current Œit¹ cafe, and at any given time you can probably find a
blogger who¹s been BoingBoinged there, like Scott Beale. It¹s Mission
location makes the move from work to play just a short walk away.

1026 Valencia Street [map | site | yelp]

Caffe Trieste

This North Beach establishment has been around since Jack Kerouac lived in
the neighborhood. Word on the street is that Wired News¹ Tony Long regularly
holds court there.

601 Vallejo St [map | site | yelp]

Reverie Coffee Cafe

Located in quiet Cole Valley, this is where angry newspaper publishers can
find Craig Newmark on any given day. With a patio out back, it¹s also great
if you¹re a smoker.

848 Cole St [map | yelp]

Coffee to the People

This Haight-Ashbury is a favorite of cute couple Chris Messina and Tara
Hunt. Second only to Ritual Roasters in terms of Dodgeball check-ins. They
even have their own blog.

1206 Masonic Avenue [map | site | yelp]

Quetzal Internet Cafe

Designer and cartoonist Kevin Cheng of OK/Cancel recommends this as an oasis
is a relatively barren nexus of the Nob Hill, Hayes Valley and Civic Center
neighborhoods.

1234 Polk Street [map | site | yelp]

Thinkers Cafe

Potrero is the neighborhood of choice for those who need to be close to 101
and 280. Before heading to Dogster headquarters nearby, Ted Rheingold often
gets some work done there over his morning coffee.

1631 20th Street [map | yelp]

Zig Zag Cafe

With AnchorFree now providing free WiFi in a number of upscale neighborhoods
including the Marina and the Castro, any cafe will do, but this is the one
that Annalee Newitz recommended.

476 Castro Street [map | yelp]


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[telecom-cities] Canadian Uni hot under the collar over Wi-Fi safety | The Register

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/22/canada_uni_wifi_ban/

Canadian Uni hot under the collar over Wi-Fi safety
Tin-foil hats all round

By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 22nd February 2006 15:18 GMT
New year, new job? Click here for thousands of tech vacancies.

A Canadian university has limited Wi-Fi networks on campus, not out of
information security concerns, but because the long-term safety of the
technology is "unproven".

Fred Gilbert, president of Canada's Lakehead University, made the order on
the basis of possible health risk from the technology, especially to young
people. Inconclusive studies into possible links between radio transmissions
and leukemia and brain tumors from, among others, scientists for the
California Public Utilities Commission, led Gilbert to make the
"precautionary ban".


"All I¹m saying is while the jury¹s out on this one, I¹m not going to put in
place what is potential chronic exposure for our students. Admittedly that¹s
highest around the locations of the antenna sites and the wireless hot
spots, but those are the places people tend to gravitate to because they get
the best reception," Gilbert said, Canadian technology website IT Business
reports.

The Ontario University makes limited use of WiFi only in areas where
fibre-optics links can't reach. Gilbert says he want to see conclusive
evidence that the technology is safe before he'll be prepared to approve its
wider use.

Robert Bradley, director of consumer and clinical radiation protection at
Health Canada, said documents due to be published this year should establish
that WiFi networks operating at below current regulatory limits poses no
risk to humans. But if the controversy about the possible health risks of
mobile phones are anything to go by that's unlikely to reassure everyone.

Jorg-Rudiger Sack, a computer science professor at Carleton University, said
that while wireless is useful in environments where people are not likely to
be working in fixed locations (such as airport departure lounges) its
benefits in campus environments are far more tenuous. ®


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[telecom-cities] NPR : Call Center Outsourcing Slows

[Anthony Townsend]

Great little NPR story today on the trend towards outsourcing call center
piecework to at-home workers. Alvin Toffler's "electronic cottage" finally
coming true?!

-

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5229458

Morning Edition, February 23, 2006 · There are signs that the trend toward
outsourcing call center jobs to low-wage countries like India may be slowing
down. Research shows that some call centers are most effective when staffed
by Americans.
 


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[telecom-cities] Phila Inquirer - "SECURITY in HAND"

[Anthony Townsend]

When I think Camden, NJ I usually think garbage-filled crack houses (I
interned with an affordable housing agency there one summer in college), but
here lo and behold, there's a homeland security startup

Someone should do a study of the geography of these homeland security / post
9/11 startups

--

Posted on Wed, Dec. 14, 2005
 
SECURITY in HAND
 
By Akweli Parker
 
Inquirer Staff Writer
 
Situational awareness - knowing where you are and how you stand in relation
to your surroundings - has helped armies win battles since before the time
of Sun Tzu.
 
A Camden firm said yesterday that it was taking that old concept high-tech
by outfitting security forces, ranging from campus police to the U.S.
military, with handheld, digital GPS locators.
 
"It's helping people understand what's going on, where your friends are,"
said Brian Regli, chief executive officer of Camden-based Drakontas L.L.C.
 
Their system, called DragonForce, puts high-powered personal digital
assistants in the hands of field personnel - security officers, police or
soldiers - and allows them to track one another on a digital map.
 
Further, a central dispatcher can view the same map, draw instructions in
"whiteboard" mode, John Madden-style, and have the X's, O's and arrows show
up instantly on the officers' PDA screens.
 
"We can quite literally tell them, graphically, exactly where to go and what
to do," Drakontas president James Sims said yesterday during a demonstration
of the technology on the Drexel campus in West Philadelphia.
 
The technology was developed at Drexel, which licensed it to Drakontas.
Drexel will be the first university to use the system.
 
Regli said the firm had planned an aggressive marketing campaign starting
next year for college campuses and public-safety agencies.
 
"We have commitments for approximately $600,000 of delivered product in the
first three quarters of 2006," Regli said. "Our goal is to grow the business
and achieve profitability in the next two years."
 
The plans also include improvements to the technology. For now, officers
must continue to rely on separate, walkie-talkie-like cell phones for oral
messages. But the next generation of PDAs used by Drexel will double as
wireless phones employing Voice over Internet Protocol. They will use the
campus wireless network, DragonFly, rather than a commercial cellular
provider, to transmit voice messages.
 
Starting next week, Drexel's campus security force plans to use a dozen of
the units in its patrols, said Bernard D. Gollotti, senior associate vice
president with Drexel's public safety department.
 
It could add an extra measure of security at a time when Drexel and nearby
University of Pennsylvania students are on edge because of a recent rash of
assaults. Drexel has "had conversations" with Penn and Philadelphia police
about sharing the system beyond Drexel's 65-acre border, Gollotti said, and
both are interested.
 
"You'll be able to look on a screen, and say, 'I want Officers 1 & 2' to go
there" to respond to an incident - rather than have every officer on duty
swarm to the same spot after hearing about it over police radio, Gollotti
said.
 
Future versions will let officers send text messages, file reports from the
scene, and view photos of suspects and surveillance videos minutes after
they are made.
 
With any system so complex, there is a lot that can go wrong. So the
Department of Justice has given $333,000 to Drexel and Atlantic County,
N.J., to test it next summer in an exercise simulating a high school
hostage-rescue situation.
 
The handheld PDAs are what the government calls "COTS," or
commercial-off-the-shelf hardware, which helps keep procurement costs down.
They range from civilian HP-brand PDAs you can buy at Radio Shack to more
exotic "mil-spec" versions with built-in GPS satellite tracking and the
strength to withstand getting run over by a tank.
 
One thing about the devices that is customized is their software.
 
Regli said his firm stripped them of their Windows operating systems,
installed more versatile Linux operating systems, and built its own
applications and features.
 
Ideas for what to include came after extensive interviews in 2004 with
soldiers, police, and other "first responders," Regli said.
 
The implications could be big. DARPA - the once-shadowy Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency, whose funding spawned the Internet - wants the
features for the U.S. military.
 
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. will use Drakontas' and other
companies' technologies in a project to give soldiers better battlefield
intelligence.
 
The resulting product will get a true trial by fire in mid-2006, when
Lockheed expects the Army's 10th Mountain Division and the First Marine
Division to take its system to war with them in Afghanistan and Iraq.


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[telecom-cities] FW: Legislation to Open Unused TV Channels for Wireless Broadband Introduced - New Papers on Why This Is Good for Rural Areas, the Economy and Public Safety

[Anthony Townsend]

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Michael Calabrese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:51:53 -0500
> Conversation: Legislation to Open Unused TV Channels for Wireless Broadband
> Introduced - New Papers on Why This Is Good for Rural Areas, the Economy and
> Public Safety
> Subject: Legislation to Open Unused TV Channels for Wireless Broadband
> Introduced - New Papers on Why This Is Good for Rural Areas, the Economy and
> Public Safety
> 
> New Legislation Would Open Unused TV Channels for Wireless Broadband
> New America Policy Papers Show Why It¹s Good for Rural Areas, the Economy and
> Public Safety
>  
> Last Friday, Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Stevens (R-AK) introduced
> legislation  directing the
> FCC to open unused TV channels in each local market‹also known as ³white
> spaces²‹for unlicensed wireless broadband access.  A bipartisan foursome of
> Commerce Committee members‹Senators George Allen (R-VA), John Sununu (R-NH),
> John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA)‹introduced similar legislation
>  .
>  
> These tremendously valuable‹and presently dormant‹TV band frequencies
> represent the much-needed rocket fuel that rural and other under-served areas
> need for affordable broadband deployment.  Vacant TV channels are perfectly
> suited for WiFi and other unlicensed wireless Internet technologies.
> Low-frequency TV band spectrum propagates farther and penetrates physical
> obstacles better than the crowded ³junk band² currently used for WiFi
> networking.  Access to TV spectrum will allow commercial ISPs, municipalities
> and non-profit community efforts to deploy wide-area wireless broadband
> networks quickly and at a low cost.
>  
> In 2004, the FCC initiated a rulemaking (Docket 04-186) to open up these white
> spaces to wireless broadband devices, subject to strict rules to avoid
> interference with TV reception. The proceeding has stalled since the departure
> of Chairman Michael Powell.  The newly introduced legislation would break this
> regulatory impasse.
>  
> Here are New America¹s most recent policy papers regarding the importance of
> opening up low-frequency spectrum in the TV band for unlicensed use:
>  
> 1.   Reclaiming the Vast Wasteland: The Economic Case
>   ­ This
> Issue Brief, by New America's J.H. Snider, describes the tremendous economic
> benefits of unlicensed spectrum and how economic and technological forces are
> leading the world in a natural shift from high-power, licensed wireless
> networks to wide-area networks of low-frequency, low-power unlicensed devices.
>  
> 2.   Myth vs. Fact: Rhetoric and Reality of Progress in Allocating More
> Spectrum for Unlicensed Use
>   ­ This
> Fact Sheet demonstrates just how little high-quality low-frequency spectrum is
> dedicated for unlicensed use, compared to the amount devoted to exclusive use
> by licensed wireless service providers.
>  
> 3.   Wireless Public Safety Data Networks Operating on Unlicensed Airwaves
>   ­ This
> updated Policy Backgrounder describes how local governments‹in Texas, Kansas,
> California and other states‹are using unlicensed wireless broadband networks
> to improve public safety across the country.
>  
> For additional recent publications on this issue‹and related issues‹please
> visit our website at www.spectrumpolicy.org  .
>  
> --
> ?    http://www.news.com/
> 
> Bills would boost unlicensed Wi-Fi
> By Anne Broache
> http://news.com.com/Bills+would+boost+unlicensed+Wi-Fi/2100-7351_3-6041585.htm
> l 
> 
> Story last modified Tue Feb 21 12:18:06 PST 2006
> Wireless Internet service providers would be allowed to operate freely on new
> chunks of unused TV spectrum, according to two new bills in the U.S. Senate.
> A pair of similar measures introduced Friday would give wireless device
> manufacturers the green light to develop products for unlicensed use on the
> broadband airwaves' "white spaces"--that is, empty, unused channels in the
> broadcast TV bands.
> 
> Companies interested in deploying Wi-Fi networks covet the bands of spectrum
> on which broadcast television currently resides because of its inherent
> scientific properties. Signals at that frequency travel straighter and
> farther. Consumer advocates say using the spectrum would enable cheaper and
> easier set-up--and thus more widespread access for rural and low-income areas.
> 
> That's one of the major reasons high-tech companies also have been clamoring
> for bumping broadcasters off the analog spectrum
>   

[telecom-cities] Katrina reports - telecoms in disaster

[Anthony Townsend]

Loads of telecom failure stuff in both the Congressional
(http://reform.house.gov/GovReform/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=39497
) as well as White House
(http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/feb/katrina/whitehousereport.pdf)
versions of the Hurricane Katrina disaster response reports 


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[telecom-cities] A Chronology of Data Breaches Since the ChoicePoint Incident

[Anthony Townsend]

I'd say I don't go a week these days without hearing of some personal
acquaintance who has been a victim of some kind of Internet-related fraud,
or identity crime

My case? A Russian couple used our Chase VISA card # to pay for a $3000
Christmas jaunt in Stockholm !


http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm


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[telecom-cities] ACM Jobs migration Task Force Study "Globalization and Offshoring of Software"

[Anthony Townsend]

The ACM has a new report on IT jobs offshoring that says its not such a big
deal.

Exec summary pasted below
Full report at
http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/

---

http://www.acm.org/globalizationreport/summary.htm



Why this Study?
This study reports on the findings of a Task Force established by The
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to look at the issues surrounding
the migration of jobs worldwide within the computing and information
technology field and industry. ACM initiated this study to provide a deeper
understanding of the trends in, and the forces behind, the globalization and
offshoring of software. Because ACM is an international educational and
scientific computing society, the study approached the issue of offshoring
of software from an international as opposed to a United States-centric
perspective. Moreover, the task force that conducted the study comprised not
only computer scientists (ACM's traditional constituency) but also labor
economists and social scientists from around the world. We believe that this
approach, and this perspective, are unique. Most reports on globalization
and offshoring are produced either by governments or national organizations,
and thus provide an inherently national perspective, or by consulting firms
in pursuit of their own or their clients' business interests.

The primary purpose of the study is to provide ACM's 83,000 members, the
computing field, the IT profession, and the public an objective perspective
on current and future trends in the globalization of the software industry
so that ACM members can better prepare themselves for a successful future in
the system, software, and services portion of the global information
technology field. We also believe this extensive study will be of value to
those shaping the policies, priorities, and investments any country must
make if it desires to remain or become a part of the global
software-systems-services industry.


Scope of the Study
This study reports on the current state of globalization and offshoring of
software and related information technology (IT) services. (Outsourcing
refers to having work for a company done by another organization. Offshoring
refers to having this work done in another country, whether or not it is
done by part of the same company.)

The report is focused primarily on software systems work carried out in
developing countries for export, as opposed to work done in a developing
country for their local market. The ACM Task Force reviewed existing reports
and data from around the world, and heard in-person from many experts, on
issues relevant to globalization and offshoring. In the process, the Task
Force took an in-depth look at the following:

  1. The economic theories and data that underpin our current
understanding of the forces shaping globalization today and in the future.
  2. Offshoring from the perspective of different countries-both
developed and developing.
  3. Offshoring from the perspective of different types of corporations.
  4. The globalization of computing research.
  5. The risks and exposure that offshoring engenders.
  6. The implications for educational systems throughout the world.
  7. The political responses to the opportunities and disruptions that
accompany globalization.

Each of these areas is explored in detail in a chapter of the report.


Findings and Recommendations
In reviewing many existing reports, data, theories, and perspectives, a
number of key findings and recommendations emerged.

  1. Globalization of, and offshoring within, the software industry are
deeply connected and both will continue to grow. Key enablers of this growth
are information technology itself, the evolution of work and business
processes, education, and national policies.

The world has changed. Information technology is largely now a global field,
business, and industry. There are many factors contributing to this change,
and much of this change has occurred within the past five years. Offshoring
is a symptom of the globalization of the software-systems-services industry.

This rapid shift to a global software-systems-services industry in which
offshoring is a reality has been driven by advances and changes in four
major areas:

  1.Technology-including the wide availability of low-cost,
high-bandwidth telecommunications and the standardization of software
platforms and business software applications.
  2.Work processes-including the digitalization of work and the
reorganization of work processes so that routine or commodity components can
be outsourced.
  3.Business models-including early-adopter champions of offshoring,
venture capital companies that insist the companies they finance use
offshoring strategies to reduce capital burn rate, and the rise of
intermediary companies that help firms to offshore their work.
  4.Other drivers-including worldwide improvements in technical
education, increased movement

[telecom-cities] NYT - Plug-In Internet Connection to Get Test on Long Island

[Anthony Townsend]

> Plug-In Internet Connection to Get Test on Long Island
> 
> By KEN BELSON
> The New York Times
> February 17, 2006
> 
> Customers love to grumble about their phone and cable companies, and
> residents on Long Island are no different. But for those unhappy with
> their service from Verizon or Cablevision, an alternative may be on
> the way.
> 
> The Long Island Power Authority announced on Wednesday that it would
> begin testing technology that provides high-speed Internet
> connections through people's electrical outlets, a service that could
> ultimately make a dent in a business now dominated by Cablevision and
> Verizon.
> 
> For several years, utilities across the country, including Con
> Edison, have been examining the technology, known as broadband over
> power line, or B.P.L. Companies like Cinergy in Cincinnati have
> started selling the service, which requires that customers plug in
> special adaptors that link to their computers via Ethernet cables or
> wirelessly.
> 
> In addition to generating new revenue, the technology is attractive
> to utilities because the two-way Internet connections let them more
> effectively monitor their networks and their customers' electricity
> use. Some companies are also using the technology to provide Internet
> phone and video services to residential and business customers.

-- End of Forwarded Message


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[telecom-cities] FW: Vending Machines as Location Markers for Calling Taxicabs

[Anthony Townsend]

> Subject: Vending Machines as Location Markers for Calling Taxicabs
> 
> [1]K-cab is a SMS-based service for calling taxicabs, which is available in
> Iwate prefecture. The service can also be used with QR codes that encode
> location information. Vending machines that bear such location-encoded QR
> codes are being installed in varous places in the prefecture so that people
> can easily call a cab just by taking a picture of a QR code with their camera
> phones and connecting to the K-cabs' taxicab dispatch website.
> 
> [2] 
> 
> This may sound attractive to whoever has the experience of being unable to
> tell where one is when calling a taxicab. Would also be highly useful for
> individuals with a speech handicap.
> 
> via [3]QR Code Blog
> 
> konomi http://ubiks.net [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2006-02-27T08:01:31Z


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[telecom-cities] gethuman - changing the face of customer service

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.gethuman.com/

This site is the forefront of an anti-tech consumer backlash against
Automated Voice Response systems

"Welcome to gethuman.com; a consumer movement created to change the face of
customer service. This free website is powered by over one million
consumers, and the site is run by volunteers who demand high quality
customer service. Our site has information for many types of companies
including credit cards, finance companies (banks and mortgages), insurance
companies, cell phone providers and many others.

The most popular part of the gethuman website is the gethuman database of
secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for
customer service. (See also our general tips.) "


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[telecom-cities] Nightlife in Bangalore:In India's Silicon Valley, Partying Like It's 1999 - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/travel/26bangalore.html?ei=5088&en=d3b
a5dc70a5a4c17&ex=129861&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

February 26, 2006
Next Stop
In India's Silicon Valley, Partying Like It's 1999
By SETH SHERWOOD

TO the untutored eye, nothing seemed amiss in the buzzing Friday night scene
at I-Bar, a stylish night spot in the Terence Conran-designed Park Hotel in
Bangalore. As a blue mosaic swimming pool glimmered outside the low-lit
lounge's glass doors, bartenders pressed glowing cocktails into manicured
hands while expatriate professionals compared notes on local food (properly
spicy) and broadband access (improperly slow). To the sounds of American R &
B spun by a D.J. behind a silvery console, a large group of Indian women in
tight jeans and high heels began to gyrate on the dance floor.

But to Arvind Chandra, a 35-year-old software engineer reclining with a
Kingfisher beer, something looked unusual indeed. Spotting the dancers, his
eyes widened as if he had witnessed a crime. In fact, he had.

"I am shocked!" he shouted, much more enthused than appalled. "This is
illegal!"

These are strange times in India's fast-rising high-tech capital, whose
abundance of bars and clubs have earned it the moniker Pub City: a law
enacted last June has effectively banned dancing in bars and nightclubs and
forces them to close by 11:30 p.m.

Officially named the Licensing and Controlling of Place of Public
Entertainment (Bangalore City) Order, 2005, the law was ostensibly intended
to shut down illegal go-go bars. But the police have applied the vaguely
worded law's strictures to practically all places of "public entertainment"
in this city of some seven million.

Some bar and restaurant owners have challenged the law in the courts, and a
few establishments have received permission to allow dancing or to stay open
past 11:30 on certain nights, according to the Bangalore office of the
Ministry of Tourism.

The watering down of Pub City under this "Cinderella law" ‹ which has
crimped but certainly not crippled the city's nocturnal vibe ‹ is another
curious turn in Bangalore's recent emergence as a would-be rival to India's
capitals of style and influence, Mumbai and New Delhi. The paradoxes of
rapid but uneven development abound.

Though it was the first Indian city with electricity, according to the
Karnataka State government ‹ and is now a global computer-industry center ‹
Bangalore is still prone to power outages. And for an emerging health-care
hub whose large parks and warm climate have inspired the nickname
Pensioner's Paradise, many streets brim with garbage, standing water and
thick exhaust fumes ‹ as well as goats, cows and people mired in obvious
poverty.

Yet as with the rebellious dancers at I-Bar, Bangalore's momentum and
determination are not easily dampened. "It has that spark, like Silicon
Valley in the 1990's," said Christian Misvaer, a Minneapolis native who is
starting a legal-process outsourcing venture in Bangalore.

He's one of thousands of North Americans and Europeans drawn to Bangalore by
the prospect of joining or creating vanguard companies. (Sip a Sunday latte
along the silvery counter at Barista, India's answer to Starbucks, and
you'll see them noodling on laptops.) As their Bay Area counterparts did in
the 1990's, the multicultural moneymakers and entrepreneurs of India's
Silicon Valley are creating a playground worthy of their rupees.
Design-conscious restaurants, high-end fashion boutiques and happening
nightspots have flourished.

Some of the new crop, like the boutique Cinnamon (where you can find the
latest fashions by the hot Indian designer Aki Narula), are blending
colorful Indian motifs and Western minimalism into a hybrid Subcontinental
cool. Others twist the twin strands of Bangalore's D.N.A. ‹ geek and chic ‹
into concoctions like the "Restart" and "Reboot" ayurvedic massage menus at
the Park Hotel's spa. In fits and starts, South Asia's techno-mecca is
cultivating its inner South Beach.

On a Friday night in November, chauffeured cars dropped guests at
Bangalore's most Miami-esque hot spot, Olive Beach, a glittery new
restaurant cloistered in a compound ringed with imported sand. The
interiors, whitewashed and candlelit, exuded the airy elegance of a
millionaire's seaside villa. No surprise. One owner is an Indian pop singer,
Sagarika.

Within the fantasy-island shelter from binary code and strategy sessions, an
apparently acceptably attired crowd of clean-cut 20- and 30-somethings
clinked kiwi margaritas at the bar and refocused computer-glazed eyes on
lobster risotto and seafood empanada under quiet strains of jazz.

To attire themselves for the new generation of Bangalore hangouts, the
city's increasingly clothes-focused ranks have impressive choices. As the
newspaper Hindu observed, "Bangalore's young and happening people,
specifically the I.T. and professional crowd, have put the city on the
nation's fashion map." The city now has a Fashion W

[telecom-cities] KYOURadio - Open Source Radio

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.kyouradio.com/

This is (as far as I know) a Bay Area radio station that is 90%
re-broadcasting podcasts syndicated under Creative Commons licenses on 1550
am. I listened on my way to work this morning and it was pretty interesting.

Their tag line is "K-Y-O-U Open Source Radio"

Pretty nifty


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[telecom-cities] MIT Tech Review -"RFID tags could greatly increase port security by tracking international cargo -- but no one wants to pay for it."

[Anthony Townsend]

Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Ports' Technology Failure

RFID tags could greatly increase port security by tracking international
cargo -- but no one wants to pay for it.

By David Talbot

The national debate over port ownership and cargo security often features
this sobering statistic: only 5 percent of cargo containers arriving in the
United States are inspected. But perhaps an even more disturbing statistic
is that fewer than 1 percent of cargo containers -- Pentagon cargo excepted
-- are tracked with simple radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags -- a
technology that could help pinpoint where a container has been and whether
someone has broken into its seal in transit.

Each RFID tag can store a unique ID number that is "read" by fixed or
handheld electronic readers. Such tags can also store bits of information
from attached sensors. They present an obvious and relatively cheap way to
help address the cargo security question.

But the industry and government have barely begun to adopt this existing
technology, says Daniel Engels, an MIT mechanical engineer and former
research director at MIT's Auto-ID Labs, a leading center of research on
RFID technology.

The problem isn't a technological one, Engels points out. Rather, the
industry has been slow to recognize a business model, governments aren't
forcing the industry's hand, and the global cargo industry has not been
motivated to forge standards.

Technology Review: How many cargo containers today are logged with RFID tags
as they depart and arrive at world ports?

Daniel Engels: Outside of the Department of Defense and a few pilot programs
around the world, I would say there are virtually no general cargo
containers being RFID tracked. It's all done manually. There are some
shipments within cargo containers being tracked with RFID; pharmaceutical
companies have put tags on their shipments to get a temperature history, so
they know when a refrigerator lost power. But those are shipments within
containers. For containers themselves, the shipping companies have been slow
to make a business case, and their customers are not forcing them along.

TR: What is the theoretical value of RFID tags for enhancing security?

DE: Of course, security starts by inspecting cargo when containers are
loaded. Once that's done, RFID has a great potential to provide real-time
visibility and intrusion detection, as well as quality measures within
containers. With RFID tags and integrated sensors I can know exactly where
that container is. I can know that nobody has tampered with it. It can also
speed customs processes on both ends, thereby reducing delays.

TR: Is it even feasible that all countries and ports will ever agree to one
system? Can it be done on a practical level?

DE: It can absolutely be done. The problem is that it's never been done
before. And whenever something hasn't been done before, it takes awhile to
build up infrastructure. It takes time and money. Think of how long it took
bar codes to get adopted. In 1974, the first bar code was scanned on a
package of Wrigley's chewing gum. It wasn't until 1984 that Wal-Mart
required it of all its suppliers. Now you have bar codes on all retail
products. In 2004, the FDA required linear bar codes on all prescription
drugs starting on April 26, 2006. So this year -- 32 years after bar codes
were first used -- you are now required to put a bar code on a prescription
drug. That's an awfully long time.


TR: But nobody was ever worried that a pack of chewing gum would help
smuggle a hydrogen bomb into the United States. What's it going to take to
get electronic tracking for cargo containers?

DE: The question is how fast is the U.S. government going to mandate the use
of these tags? They do have new container security rules, but the affected
companies oppose the rules, because it requires change and the expenditure
of money. These industries have tremendous political clout.

TR: What would it cost?

DE: About $200 per container buys you active intrusion detectors linked to
RFID tags that are on the market today. According to U.S. Customs,
approximately 25,000 containers are offloaded daily in the U.S., which makes
for an added cost of over $1.8 billion per year just for tags. Then you have
to outfit ports with tag readers and information systems that support the
readers. Who would pay for this infrastructure? This could be widespread on
the U.S. side, and could potentially be [put into] handheld devices at the
point of departure and be integrated into Customs rules and regulations. You
need U.S. Customs people at departure ports, or someone trained and
entrusted by the U.S. government, to perform the inspections prior to
sealing the containers. Clearly, the U.S. government would need to pay for
these people. And of course everyone needs to use standards.

TR: Government mandates aside, can a business case be made for RFID tags on
containers?

DE: The DOD sees a very specific value. They're willing to spend $100 per
tag 

[telecom-cities] Re: fend for yourself in Singapore

[Anthony Townsend]

Wow - this was intriguing until I saw the part about "Appointment as a
Visiting Scholar is non-stipendiary"


Lon Berquist ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote @ 2/27/06 2:17 PM:

> 
> 
> The Singapore Internet Research Centre
> 
> The SIRC Visiting Scholars Programme supports research by individuals who are
> undertaking research projects related to information technology in Asia,
> especially Singapore. It is open to practicing scholars or advanced graduate
> students. The Programme is for a minimum of one month up to a maximum of two
> semesters.
> 


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[telecom-cities] Joroff project

[Anthony Townsend]

What are the elements of a media city
How do they fit together
Hwo will they change

Specialization import/export digital
Korean animation
LA porn
NorCal special effects

Smart mobs journalism

> 
> Notes to Mike
> 
> Look at some of the literature on media clusters
> 
> 1) some things to jot down (notes)
> 2) some callls
> 3) jot things down
> 
> Allen Scott
> Guys on Silicon Alley
> 
> -make the argument to show what economic development can be
> -R&D centers (Yahoo, LA - USC Center for Interactive Cinema, Vancouver?)
> -video games/digital media
> -Silicon Valley
> -how do they fit together
> -R&D to production to
> -what is it that we could expect in a media region/media area?
> -questions/issues from Anne's memo
> 
> BBC-TV is moving education  and sports
> ITV in Grenada
> 
> MLJ working for City of Salford
> 
> $1500, 3x days
> Timetable: 
> 

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[telecom-cities] Oops

[Anthony Townsend]

(remove foot from mouth)


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[telecom-cities] BBC NEWS | Technology | Online loans help world's poor

[Anthony Townsend]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4759122.stm

 Online loans help world's poor
By Clark Boyd
Technology correspondent

The internet is revolutionising how donors and lenders in the US are
connecting with small entrepreneurs in developing countries, be they a
farmer in Kenya who wants to invest in new cows or a seamstress in India who
wants to open her own shop.

For 14 years, Dennis Whittle worked at the World Bank, overseeing big
development projects that gave out huge loans.

But in 1997, Mr Whittle's boss gave him a new challenge - to fund small
projects. After several failed attempts to push these small projects through
the World Bank bureaucracy, he decided to call a brainstorming session.

"My colleagues and I went into a room at the World Bank one day, and said,
what if we just allowed anybody to come in and just pitch their idea. And
what if we made decisions on the same day," said Mr Whittle.

They decided to put the plan into action, and it proved successful. More
than 1,000 groups from some 85 countries submitted ideas for small
businesses and non-profit projects.

More than 500 finalists were chosen, and came to Washington, DC, to make
their cases for funding. On the final day, the World Bank awarded $5m to
dozens of small start-ups.

But what Mr Whittle remembers most is a conversation with one South African
woman who did not win that day.

She was not upset. In fact, she was convinced that there were many people
around the world who would fund her project if they knew about it.

Going online

Dennis Whittle saw an opportunity to tap into what he calls the "secondary
market" for donations. He quit the World Bank, and six years ago, he and a
colleague started a private, web-based microfinance program called Global
Giving.

Take a goat herder in Uganda. If you give him $25, that's two smaller
goats. That's a great start. With $100, you can imagine more goats, perhaps
a small shelter, stock up on goat feed
Jessica Flannery, Kiba
"Global Giving just enables small-scale grassroots projects to match up with
relatively small donors all around the world, who want to help them make a
difference," said Mr Whittle.

"The website is kind of like a combination of eBay and Amazon. And the idea
is that qualified grassroots projects from around the world can be listed,
as long as they meet certain qualifications.

"If you're a donor, and you're interested in HIV/Aids, you can find projects
to fund. If you're interested in projects in Kenya, you can find those. It's
a clearing house."

A potential donor searches through a list of small-scale projects on the
Global Giving website. You can even e-mail project leaders for more
information.

Then, the donor can choose to give as little as $10 to a project. Some,
though, have given as much as $150,000.

Needy projects

Global Giving is not the only website tapping into internet's power to
directly connect would-be funders with would-be entrepreneurs.

Another site is called Kiva, the brainchild of a husband and wife team from
California.

Kiva's story starts a little more than two years ago, when Jessica Flannery
went to East Africa. She was working for a group that gives $100 grants to
needy projects.

"Every single day, I would meet an entrepreneur, and hear about how $100 had
changed not just his or her life, but also the lives of their families,
friends and other community members," said Ms Flannery.

"Take a goat herder in Uganda. If you give him $25, that's two smaller
goats. That's a great start. With $100, you can imagine more goats, perhaps
a small shelter, stock up on goat feed. So, that little bit of money can
really help set someone up."

Jessica's husband Matt Flannery, a computer programmer, came to visit her in
East Africa for a few weeks.

He too was moved by the entrepreneurial spirit he saw there. So, he set out
to design a website that could connect small lenders with small donors.

"I wanted to start a little program where someone in America or Europe or
Australia or anywhere with the internet could lend money online to a small
businessperson in Africa," said Mr Flannery.

'Peer-to-peer' giving

The result is the Kiva website. Kiva is a Swahili word for unity or
agreement. The site went live last year.

The challenge that these microcharity enterprises have is identifying
great projects, vetting them, ensuring that they are on the level, and
ensuring that they are using the money wisely
Ethan Zuckerman, Harvard Law School
Kiva users are not donors, they are lenders. Matt Flannery calls it a kind
of "peer-to-peer microfinance." Using the internet, Kiva lenders can loan
out as little as 5 dollars to a project.

"The way it works is you pay using PayPal," said Mr Flannery. "Then, you
receive updates that are like blogs over e-mail and on the internet, and
eventually you get paid back according to the performance of the
entrepreneur."

Lenders do not receive interest on loans, but the borrower does pay some
interest, which helps pay som

[telecom-cities] FW: [Urban Atmospheres] PhD in Urban Computing ... Cityware Studentship at Bath, UK

[Anthony Townsend]

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Eric Paulos
> 
> PhD studentship at the University of Bath and HP Labs Bristol
> 
> Applications are invited for a PhD studentship funded by the
> Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of
> the Cityware project.
> 
> This is a major collaborative project investigating mobile and
> pervasive systems and urban design.  Project partners include the
> University of Bath, Imperial College London, The Bartlett Faculty of
> the Built Environment at UCL, HP Labs, Vodafone, Nokia, IBM, Node and
> Bath & North-East  Somerset Council.
> 
> The PhD student will be based at the University of Bath and at HP
> Labs Bristol.  The PhD research will focus on trust as a major
> concern of the users of mobile and pervasive systems in urban
> environments.  The work will first deepen our understanding of trust-
> and risk-related issues in urban social and public spaces, and
> investigate user requirements, perceptions and reasoning about trust
> involving both peer-to-peer interactions and interactions with
> networked services.  This study will draw on and add to what is known
> in psychology, sociology, and urban design and architecture. The
> analysis will consider how trust relates, for different types of
> user, to factors such as social acceptability and convenience.
> 
> This trust analysis, combined with a threat analysis developed by a
> collaborating researcher, will lead into the development of
> techniques for securing users of mobile and pervasive systems against
> attacks on security and privacy.  This will lead to design
> implications for spaces, architectural features, devices, and
> services and to new security protocols for mobile and pervasive
> systems.  These developments will be tested in a range of
> applications developed with the project partners.
> 
> The student will be jointly supervised by Dr Eamonn O'Neill (Computer
> Science) and Dr Danae Stanton Fraser (Psychology) from the University
> of Bath and by Dr Tim Kindberg from HP Labs.  The student will divide
> his/her time between the University and HP Labs.  The student will
> work closely with a post-doctoral Research Associate who will also
> spend time at both sites.
> 
> In addition, there will be significant interaction and collaboration
> with the other project partners, both academic and industrial.  The
> ideal candidate will have a good first degree or MSc in a relevant
> subject (e.g. Psychology, Computer Science, Economics, Sociology or a
> Design discipline) and a strong interest in Human-Computer
> Interaction (HCI) with mobile and pervasive systems.
> 
> Applications should be made by 20 March 2006.  The PhD will start as
> soon as possible, ideally immediately.  Potential applicants are
> welcome to
> contact Eamonn O'Neill for informal discussions or enquiries, either
> by phone (01225 383216) or email ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).  The
> Cityware website is at http://www.cityware.org.uk/.  General
> information about studying for a
> PhD at Bath, including an application form, is available at: http://
> www.bath.ac.uk/grad-office/
> 
> 


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[telecom-cities] New Institute for the Future blog on "Virtual China"

[Anthony Townsend]

My colleague Lyn Jeffery has started a new blog exploring Chinese Internet
culture at 

http://iftf.typepad.com/virtualchina/

This is a must-read blog for anyone interested in China.



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[telecom-cities] Tech Review -

[Anthony Townsend]

A friend of mine, Jim Youll, tried to do something similar at the Media Lab
in 2000 called CreditBinder, but it never took off..

http://agentzero.com/~jim/archive/medialab/creditbinder/

---

Monday, March 06, 2006
Identity 2.0

An open-source identity management system could change the way we share
personal information over the Internet.

By Kate Greene

The Internet can be dangerous. It wasn't designed to safeguard important
information -- such as people's social-security numbers, home addresses, or
bank-account information. Because of this lack of built-in security, the
task of managing private data has fallen to a host of private entities:
banks, credit-card companies, online merchants, insurance companies, and the
like.

Recently, however, software engineers and policy makers have been designing
a new layer of security for the Internet. The goal is to free up identity
information from organizations and companies, and also allow individuals
more control over who sees their personal information.

Last week, IBM and Novell announced they would supply programming code to an
open-source software initiative -- a project that could become the framework
for people to transfer personal information securely, from credit-card and
social-security numbers to eBay ratings and instant messenging "buddy"
lists.

The project, named Higgins, is managed by the Eclipse Foundation, an
open-source community. In fact, it's the first identity management framework
to use the open-source software model, in which anyone can contribute
software code. Higgins aims to "provide a simple way for multiple identity
management systems to interact," says Mike Milinkovich, executive director
of the foundation. IBM is expected to roll out software that incorporates
Higgins technology within the next year or so.

One "identity management system" that Higgins might interact with is
Microsoft's recently announced InfoCard, which will be integrated into its
new Vista operating system. InfoCard exchanges user-specified information
with authenticated parties, allowing people to be less dependent on multiple
user names and passwords. For instance, an InfoCard, which could be linked
with various existing banks or credit-card companies, might contain your
name, address, and account number. If you wanted to purchase a book at
Amazon, the relevant information from your InfoCard would be supplied to
Amazon (an InfoCard- and user-authenticated party). Since you wouldn't have
to re-enter your information on Amazon's website, it would also reduce the
chance that it could be stolen.

Kim Cameron, architect of identity and access at Microsoft, considers the
current identity situation on the Web -- with its passwords, cookies, and
auto-complete forms -- to be a "patchwork of one-off and ad-hoc identity
contraptions." InfoCard and similar management systems will help, he says,
to add a secure layer of identity to the Internet.

Higgins will complement rather than compete with InfoCard and other
management systems, says John Clippinger, a senior fellow at the Berkman
Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Although the two
systems share the goal of managing personal information, Clippinger makes a
distinction: "Higgins is not an identity management system at all. It works
with [those systems]; it overlays them, and part of its value is a way to
federate different identity management systems." In other words, Higgins
could allow people to control and transfer different types of identity
information.

The potential of Higgins becomes clearer if one compares the offerings of
different identity management systems. InfoCard solves one of the biggest
security issues on the Internet, says Dick Hardt, CEO of Sxip Identity, a
firm that sells another management system, which helps users protect
themselves from identity theft. "[Microsoft has] built something that's
highly isolated and secure." But, Hardt adds, you don't need InfoCard's
security power to move around, for instance, your Amazon DVD preferences to
Netflix -- that's something Sxip software is designed to accommodate.
Higgins would connect together both of these systems, so the user would be
unaware of having multiple identity systems.

In order for Higgins to work well with highly secure applications, such as
InfoCard, as well as in less secure environments, it needs a high level of
security itself. Being an open-source application helps achieve this, says
Raj Nagaratnam, chief architect for identity management at IBM. "The open
source model allows for hundreds of thousands of developers...if there's
vulnerability, they will fix it and continually build the platform."

And Higgins addresses more than just the idea of secure software for
identity management, Nagaratnam says. "The reason we went to open source is
because this problem isn't just a technical issue, it's about how end-users
want to actively manage their identities. It brings in social aspects of how
users want to collaborat

[telecom-cities] FW: Top 50 Emergency Uses for Your Camera Phone

[Anthony Townsend]

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Smart Mobs 
> Subject: Top 50 Emergency Uses for Your Camera Phone
> 
> [1]About has a list of top emergency uses for your cameraphone compiled by
> Paul Purcell, a security analyst and preparedness consultant : Just a few:
> 
>> - Record parking spot locations
> - Engine repairs. Send a pic to a mechanic who may talk you through a quick
> fix
> - Child custodian. If you can't get to your kids at school or other function,
> relay a picture of the person who is coming to pick them up.
> - ID your evac gear. Take a picture to prove ownership.
> - Info on injured or hospitalized people
> - ID the rescuer.
> - If a rescuer is picking up your child or pet, photo the rescuer (and the
> child or pet) and the vehicle they used, their name tag, registration numbers
> on helicopters, vehicle tag numbers or names of boats.
> - Hotel room number and location
> - Property pics for retrieval companies. Some scenarios will see you unable to
> return home. Property photos will allow you to identify specific items you'd
> like retrieved. 
> 


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[telecom-cities] FW: High-tech paint will block cell phone calls

[Anthony Townsend]

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Smart Mobs 
> Subject: High-tech paint will block cell phone calls
> 
> Playing to the backlash against ubiquitous communication, a company called
> Natural Nano 
> is developing a special high-tech paint  that locks out unwanted cell phone
> signals on demand. Newsday
>  7.story?coll=ny-leadnationalnews-headlines>  reports.
> 
> "NaturalNano has found a way to use nanotechnology to blend particles of
> copper into paint that can be brushed onto walls and effectively deflect radio
> signals.
> 
> NaturalNano will combine this signal-blocking paint scheme with a
> radio-filtering device that collects phone signals from outside a shielded
> space, allowing certain transmissions to proceed while blocking others
> 
> It appears to be legal - jamming devices that emit radio signals to prevent
> cell phones are not  - The radio filter would allow all emergency radio
> communications to pass through the shield With all other signals, like cell
> phones, the filter would act like a spigot to block or allow them to pass
> through‹say, only during intermission."


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[telecom-cities] The Korea Herald : Location-based services in high demand

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2006/03/02/200603020036.asp

Location-based services in high demand

With the nation seeking ways to crack down on sex crimes, wireless operators
could reap the benefits by offering location-based services.

These services are being touted as possibly one of the best preventive
measures against sex offenders repeating their crime after release from
prison.

The country's largest wireless operator SK Telecom Co. has seen the
subscription of its safety-related services rise from 2.45 million last
December to 2.61 million last February, SK Telecom said.

It means that 152,000 new customers have joined the service during the last
two months.

Subscribers of the second-largest operator KTF Co.'s "mobile police" service
also increased 23 percent during the same period, from 85,000 to 105,000,
the company said.

The smallest carrier LG Telecom Ltd. also added 30,000 new subscribers to
its "friend-search" service during the same period.

Thanks to the widespread use of location-based technologies, like the global
positioning system, mobile-phone users are able to get accurate information
on the whereabouts of loved ones.

There are even ways to use these services for free.

SK Telecom's "emergency call" service, for instance, enables a user to
simultaneously call four persons, who are listed as their "protectors in
emergency," by simply pressing a hot-key on his mobile handset.

Automatically, information on his whereabouts and an electronic map appear
in the window of the four receiving handsets.

To use the service, the subscriber needs a handset equipped with GPS
functions.

Also, the carrier's "i-Kids" service enables parents to keep track of their
children using their cell phones, the internet and GPS satellite technology.

Parents can use the service free of charge up to 20 times but get charged 80
won per use after that.

The mobile carrier also offers the so-called "safety zone" service.

Designed for kids' safety, the service gives general information on a
child's location, by setting up three different safety zones, each with a
two-kilometer radius.

If a kid gets out of the safety zone, parents are immediately notified.

The service is offered free for eight checks per day, according to SK
Telecom.

Other than these services, the operator has a "route-tracking service,"
which informs parents of their child's latest moves, and "location-informer"
service, which sends one's location via handset to an agreed partner.

By aligning with personal security firm CAPS, SK Telecom and KTF offer the
so-called mobile police services, which enable a customer to call security
guards by pressing a hot-key. KTF charges a monthly fixed fee of 3,500 won
for the service.

([EMAIL PROTECTED])

By Hwang Si-young



2006.03.02


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[telecom-cities] The Korea Times : WiBro Service to Hit Highway

[Anthony Townsend]

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200602/kt2006022217225410160.htm

WiBro Service to Hit Highway


By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

With the high-speed mobile Internet service commencing in Korea next week,
KT will start a demonstration service on parts of the Seoul-Pusan Highway
and the Seoul-Pundang subway line.

KT, the nation¹s largest fixed-line telephone and broadband Internet service
operator, said Wednesday that it will start testing and demonstrating the
WiBro network on March 2 for its 200 employees. It will be open to the
public in April and two months later the paid service will begin in parts of
Seoul and nearby Kyonggi Province area, KT said.

The first service area will be a 16-kilometer section on Kyongbu
(Seoul-Pusan) Highway, from its starting point at Hannam Bridge in Seoul to
Pangyo. Also, a 25-kilometer subway section from Sollung Station in southern
Seoul to Ori station in Pundang, Kyonggi Province will be available for the
WiBro connection.

``We will invite 2,000 citizens for the pilot program beginning in April,
and the official service will kick off in June,¹¹ KT¹s spokesperson Koo
Ja-ho said. ``It will be around the end of this year when the WiBro network
covers the whole city.¹¹

KT said it had set up 150 transmission posts in the areas for the test
service.

WiBro, short for ``wireless broadband,¹¹ is a network enabling high speed
Internet access, even in fast-moving vehicles, including cars, trains, and
even the subway, at a speed of up to 120 kilometers per hour.

The Internet-on-the-road service has been considered to be the predominant
next-generation mobile Internet service. It drew wide public attention when
it was successfully demonstrated in front of domestic and foreign media
during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Pusan in
November.

Currently, KT and SK Telecom, leading mobile phone service providers, are
taking charge of the Wibro project for its early takeoff in the country.
Hardware manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics are also making
significant investment in developing WiBro terminals.

KT said that the WiBro network can provide a download speed of 4 mega-bites
per second, which is similar or a bit slower than ADSL, KT¹s existing
household broadband Internet service.

When it becomes available to the public, people can hook up to the network
by using a card-type receiver for their laptops or other portable gadgets.
There are a few personal digital assistant products ready to hit the store
shelves that have an embedded WiBro receiver.

The service fee for WiBro is not fixed yet but there will be various
options, the company said. ``We are considering to give multiple options to
customers by mixing fixed-rate and pay-per-packet charging systems,¹¹
spokesman Koo said.


02-22-2006 17:21


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[telecom-cities] BIG BROTHER LOOKS ON AS MOTORISTS FUME ON HOUSTON ROADWAYS

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.spychips.com/press-releases/houston-motorists.html
September 22, 2005

BIG BROTHER LOOKS ON AS MOTORISTS FUME ON HOUSTON ROADWAYS
Critics Ask Why Money was Spent on Surveillance Instead of Preparedness

As Hurricane Rita barrels down on Texas, motorists attempting to flee in
their vehicles should ask why the government has spent millions of dollars
on highway surveillance rather than investing in sound evacuation planning,
says Liz McIntyre, co-author of Spychips: How Major Corporations and
Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID (Nelson Current; October
4, 2005).

Hundreds of thousands of motorists, including McIntyre's own husband, are
caught in an unprecedented 16-hour traffic jam that gets worse by the minute
as cars run out of gas and entire families are overcome by the 100-degree
temperatures.

"My husband is worried he will be stranded and face the hurricane right
there on the pavement," says McIntyre, who adds that he is debating whether
to turn around and find shelter or wait helplessly as transportation
authorities try to figure out what to do.

"This is what happens when you trade common sense for flashy and expensive
technology," McIntyre points out. "Few motorists are aware that their tax
dollars are being spent on Big Brother boondoggles rather than being
invested in practical measures to protect the public."

In her upcoming book, McIntyre and co-author Katherine Albrecht detail
Houston's extraordinary investment in surveillance technologies like RFID
readers every few miles designed to invisibly scan the toll transponders in
passing vehicles, miles from the toll booth.

Other costly schemes include hundreds of robotic cameras that can observe
passing cars and zoom in on individual motorists' faces, and an Orwellian
central command center to watch and record it all.

"I'm sure they're getting an eyeful today," says McIntyre.

"There was more than enough brainpower and money in Houston to come up with
an evacuation plan," she adds. "The problem is those resources were
misdirected. Instead of developing contingency plans for evacuating
America's fourth-largest city, they were schmoozing with the RFID industry
and developing Big Brother ways to watch us all. When this is over, I'm sure
Houston residents will have a lot of questions for roadway authorities about
how they've been spending their time." 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] FW: Red Cross Red Crescent - World Disasters Report 2005 - role of information in disasters

[Anthony Townsend]

Intersting report, focuses on the role of information in diasters and
disaster relief

-

http://www.ifrc.org/publicat/wdr2005/index.asp



World Disasters Report 2005

People need information as much as water, food, medicine or shelter.
Information can save lives, livelihoods and resources. It may be the only
form of disaster preparedness that the most vulnerable can afford. The right
kind of information leads to a deeper understanding of needs and ways to
respond. The wrong information can lead to inappropriate, even dangerous
interventions.

Information bestows power. Lack of information can make people victims of
disaster. Do aid organizations use information to accumulate power for
themselves or to empower others? The report calls on agencies to focus less
on gathering information for their own needs and more on exchanging
information with the people they seek to support.

The World Disasters Report 2005 features:

Data or dialogue? The role of information in disasters

Hurricane early warning in the Caribbean

Locusts in West Africa: early warning, late response

Information black hole in Aceh

Sharing information for tsunami recovery in South Asia

Humanitarian media coverage in the digital age

Radio in Afghanistan: challenging perceptions, changing behaviour

Disaster data: key databases, trends and statistics

Plus: photos, tables, maps, graphics, Red Cross Red Crescent contacts and
index

Published annually since 1993, the World Disasters Report brings together
the latest trends, facts and analysis of contemporary crises ­ whether
'natural' or human-made, quick-onset or chronic.



--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] BBC NEWS | Wi-fi set to re-wire social rules

[Anthony Townsend]

I believe Jo Twist is a subscriber to TELECOM-CITIES. Nice quotes!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4770188.stm

 Wi-fi set to re-wire social rules
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website


With more people now using broadband rather than dial-up and online shopping
soaring during the weeks before Christmas, there is no doubt that Britons
are big fans of the net.

But most of that home net use occurs when people sit at a computer in a back
bedroom, study or lounge.

Increasing numbers of people use wi-fi in their homes so they can tote their
laptop around and surf in the kitchen, garden or garage; but still the
experience remains stubbornly tethered to a home connection.

This could be about to undergo a big change.

A click away

For some time, many cafes, libraries, shops, stations, airports and
restaurants have been installing wi-fi access points so customers can surf
the web as they eat, browse or wait.

In some British cities, plans are advancing to set up so many hotspots that
entire neighbourhoods become wi-fi enabled. One of the biggest will be in
London's Square Mile; it will give more than 350,000 workers always-on
access to the net.

At the same time, many local authorities have equipped kiosks with wireless
access so their residents can use the web when they are on the High Street.

These moves to set up wi-fi zones rather than just hotspots look set to let
people take their online lives with them wherever they are.

Dr Jo Twist, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy
Research, said once the net was ubiquitous like power and water, it had the
potential to be "transformative".

The divide that separates people from their online lives will utterly
disappear. Instead of leaving behind all those net-based friends and
activities when you walk out of your front door, you will be able to take
them with you.

The buddies you have on instant message networks, friends and family on
e-mail, your eBay auctions, your avatars in online games, the TV shows you
have stored on disk, your digital pictures, your blog - everything will be
just a click away.

It could also kick off entirely new ways of living, working and playing. For
instance, restaurant reviews could be geographically tagged so as soon as
you approach a cafe or coffee shop, the views of recent diners could scroll
up on your handheld gadget.

Alternative reality games could also become popular. These use actors in
real world locations to play out the ultimate interactive experience.

Digital divisions

Key to the transformation, said Dr Twist, would be mobile devices that can
use wi-fi. These handsets are only just starting to appear but will likely
cram a huge amount of functions into one gadget.

Dr Twist believes the move could start to close the digital divide.

"If we have a ubiquitous, cheap or free wireless network that our portable
and mobile devices can access, therefore skipping the need for a pricey PC,
then that could be incredibly empowering for lots of people," she said.

Such a situation offered all kinds of opportunities for education, training
and regeneration.

"It could be really empowering and it could help encourage innovative uses
of that network which enliven our public spaces as well as our networks with
each other," said Dr Twist.

But, she added, the stumbling block could be the price of access to
ubiquitous wireless networks. At the moment, net use is a pastime of the
relatively well-off. Without moves to make access more affordable, net use
will remain a divisive force.

What also needs to be confronted are the potential privacy and liberty
implications of such an always-online world.

"When chips, sensors, and wireless devices mesh together, there may be some
unintended consequences," said Dr Twist.

"We have to make sure we think about those, and think about what other
exclusions might be brought about by those developments, too." 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Korea Times - "Korea to Fight Web Attacks From China"

[Anthony Townsend]

Can someone please tell me what an "unlawful IP" address is?

--

Korea to Fight Web Attacks From China


By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

To counter the problem of identity theft, the Korean government will block
the backdoor Internet pathway from abroad, which were used to steal personal
data by getting bypass links to the country's Internet network.

The Ministry of Information and Communication Tuesday revealed steps aimed
at controlling the nation's rampant personal data leakage to overseas
countries, especially China.

``Since last week, in collaboration with Internet service providers, we
already intercepted 2,600 illegal IPs, which were found to be the main
routes for penetrating the Korean network,'' Lee Sung-ok, director general
at the ministry, said.

Identity theft en masse surfaced last month after complaints piled up that
hackers stole private data, including resident registration numbers, from
Koreans in order to subscribe to ``Lineage,'' the popular online game.

Chinese hackers are suspected of leading the cyber crimes via a bypass link
based on unlawful IPs, an alternative path other than the legitimate,
primary one.

``In the future, we will continue to keep tabs on such illegal IPs geared
toward breaking into the Korean network and stealing personal information,''
Lee said.

Lee said the ministry will also urge local Internet firms to use an
alternative system other then resident registration numbers, the Korean
version of social security numbers, for signing up to Web sites.

``Furthermore, we will recommend Web sites use cell phones as a
certification method to deter illegal subscribers. They can require people
to enter their mobile phone numbers together with resident numbers when
signing up,'' Lee noted.

``The site then will send certification figures via mobile handsets and
users will be have to enter the multi-digit number on the Web site for user
verification,'' he added.

The Chinese government will be asked to delete the personal data of many
Koreans in circulation in China's cyberspace, he said.

To prevent the recurrence of massive personal data leakage, the ministry
also unveiled a package of measures including propagation of security
patches as well as firewalls.

``Currently, the penetration rates of security patches stand at just 38
percent. We will increase the figure 80 percent and mandate gaming companies
to install Web firewalls,'' Lee said.

Toward that end, the country's main portal and game sites will have to be
equipped with programs that automatically install security patches on
subscribers' computers.

The ministry also looks to check the security of the country's 70,000
most-visited Web sites every day to shield them from onslaughts by
unscrupulous crackers. 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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[telecom-cities] Guardian - Britain turns off - and logs on

[Anthony Townsend]

> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1726018,00.html
> 
> Britain turns off - and logs on
> 
> More time is now spent on the internet than on watching TV, according to
> Google survey
> 
> Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
> Wednesday March 8, 2006
> The Guardian
> 
> We may be known as a nation of couch potatoes, but it seems that Britons are
> grasping the 21st century with both hands: we now spend more time watching
> the web than watching television, according to internet giant Google.
> 
> A survey conducted on behalf of the search engine found that the average
> Briton spends around 164 minutes online every day, compared with 148 minutes
> watching television. That is equivalent to 41 days a year spent surfing the
> web: more than almost any other activity apart from sleeping and working.
> 
> Television addiction has been Britain's national pastime for years, but
> experts agree that viewers around the country are increasingly switching on
> their computer screens instead of their TV sets. And it is a phenomenon that
> is set to grow, with two thirds of respondents in the Google survey saying
> that they had increased the time spent online in the last year.
> 
> "This is not a changing of the guard," said Richard Gregory of Google UK,
> "but it does show how people think about the place the internet has in their
> lives."
> 
> The research was conducted with a weighted sample of 1,100 people around the
> country, who were asked to estimate how long they spent on a number of
> different activities.
> 
> The Google survey found surfers in London and Scotland are the country's
> heaviest web users, spending more than three hours a day online. That was
> around 40 minutes more each day than those in the lowest category, the
> north-west of England.
> 
> It is a high water mark in the rise of the internet. It is little more than
> 10 years since the start of the dotcom revolution but already more than 1
> billion people around the world are connected to the internet. Television,
> in contrast, took decades to reach a similar number of people.
> 
> Experts say Google's figures are disputable, but that they do mark part of a
> wider trend towards the broad adoption of the web.
> 
> "What has always held the web back has been the technology," said Arash
> Amel, senior analyst with Screen Digest.
> 
> "Now you have another screen in the house. The internet is also used for
> entertainment other than just web surfing and email. The bandwidth is now
> several megabits as standard in most homes, and this has opened up the
> possibilities."
> 
> That change is almost certainly a result of increased business connectivity,
> which allows office workers to surf the web all day. Combined with the
> increase in high-speed broadband connections at home, the opportunities to
> get online are far greater than at any previous time.
> 
> "It's definitely linked to the increase of broadband penetration and
> internet access as a whole," said Mr Gregory. "There's a learning curve as
> people find out how to interact with the web."
> 
> Google's claim is contradicted by the latest research from the television
> audience ratings group Barb, which uses electronic measurement to determine
> the extent of television viewing. Barb said that in January viewers watched
> television for an average of almost 238 minutes - nearly four hours a day.
> 
> But the assertion is backed up - at least in part - by a recent study from
> the media watchdog Ofcom that showed how younger audiences are moving away
> from television.
> 
> The report into media literacy, which was published last week, said that
> television viewing has declined in recent years for the first time in its
> history. It also said that the "reach" of television - the number of people
> switching on for at least 15 minutes - had declined by 2.5% among those aged
> between 25 and 34. The shift is even more marked among younger users, with
> reach declining by 2.9% among the under-25s over the same period.
> 
> As teenagers spend more time on time-intensive activities like blogging and
> surfing social networking sites like Myspace.com, the reduction of their
> other media consumption is inevitable.
> 
> But industry observers are at pains to point out that TV and the internet
> are not mutually exclusive. Like radio, which is often played in the
> background, television watching does not have to be active. In fact,
> internet users are increasingly using their computers to watch television
> and video, read web pages and listen to radio simultaneously.
> 
> Competition between the different media may not even be a question for
> younger users, as broadcasters and technology companies move ever closer
> towards converging with each other.
> 
> Sky and BT are among those who have announced plans to deliver TV channels
> over the internet, following an industry-wide trend towards providing video
> over the web.
> 
> So-called internet protocol television 

[telecom-cities] FW: First Monday - Urban Screens Special Issue

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/special11_2/index.html

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Pieter Boeder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2006 23:57:30 -0800 (PST)
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [Urbanscreens-l] First Monday Urban Screens Special Issue
> 
> Welcome, gentle reader, to this First Monday Urban
> Screens special issue, the first publication of its
> kind. With the advent of digital media, the global
> communication environment has changed dramatically. In
> the context of the rapidly evolving commercial
> information sphere of our cities, especially since the
> 1990s, a number of novel digital display technologies
> have been introduced into the urban landscape. This
> transformation has intersected with other major
> transformations of media technology and culture over
> the last two decades: the formation of distributed
> global networks and the emergence of mobile media
> platforms such as mobile phones. Their cumulative and
> synergistic impact has been profound. Convergence of
> screen technologies with digital communication
> technologies such as GSM, RFID, Internet and database
> technologies has lead to the emergence of a new,
> interactive and increasingly pervasive medium: Urban
> Screens.
> 
> Urban Screens can be defined as interactive, dynamic
> digital information displays in urban environments.
> Their genesis is the consequence of two parallel
> technological developments: evolution and subsequent
> growth in magnitude of the traditional display screen,
> and its subsequent convergence with other digital
> media technologies. Forms and appearances range from
> large daylight compatible LED billboards, plasma or
> SED screens, information displays in public
> transportation systems and electronic city information
> terminals to dynamic, intelligent surfaces that may be
> fully integrated into architectural façade structures.
> Their introduction in the urban environment poses new,
> unparalleled challenges and opportunities, which we
> will explore and document in this issue.
> 
> Currently, the primary purpose of this new
> infrastructure appears to be the management and
> control of consumer behaviour through advertising.
> Commercial companies are starting to realise that
> digital billboards are a powerful medium to
> communicate their goals and missions, in line with the
> new paradigms of the digital economy. Interconnected
> Urban Screens have tremendous potential to serve as a
> platform for information exchange. Such large networks
> are already being developed Russia, China, USA and
> South America, where Urban Screens are rapidly
> becoming a key element in commercial and government
> informational infrastructure. The implications for the
> public sphere are profound. Information density per
> square metre is increasing, yet at the same time
> individuals have less control than ever over the
> actual format and content of that information.
> 
> [Figure 1] CAPTION: Samsung socialism: public
> propaganda in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
> 
> Public space has always been a place for human
> interaction, a unique arena for the exchange of
> rituals and communication. Its architecture, being a
> storytelling medium itself, plays an important role in
> providing a stage for this interaction. The ways in
> which public space is inhabited can be read as a
> participatory process of its audience. Its (vanishing)
> role as a space for social and symbolic discourse has
> often been discussed in urban sociology.
> Modernisation, the growing independence of place and
> time and individualisation seem to devastate
> traditional city life and its social rhythm. The Urban
> Screens project explores the opportunities for opening
> this steadily growing infrastructure of digital
> screens, currently dominated by market forces, for
> cultural content, along with its potential for
> revitalising of the public sphere.
> 
> Urban Screens 2005: Discovering the potential of
> outdoor screens for urban society
> Urban Screens 2005 was the first international
> conference that was solely dedicated to the emerging
> Urban Screens phenomenon. Presentations covered a
> broad spectrum of topics and issues, ranging from
> critical theory to project experiences by researchers
> and practitioners in the field of art, architecture,
> urban studies and digital culture. It addressed the
> growing infrastructure of large digital moving
> displays, which increasingly influence and structure
> the visual sphere of our public spaces. Urban Screens
> 2005 investigated how the currently dominating
> commercial use of these screens can be broadened and
> culturally curated: can these screens become a tool to
> contribute to a lively urban society, involving its
> audience interactively?
> 
> [Figure 2] CAPTION: Urban Screens have tremendous
> potential for (re)vitalising the public sphere
> 
> A new medium that is digital, interactive and
> pervasive
> What we are seeing is the emergence of a new medi

[telecom-cities] The 411 on Directory Assistance - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

Has anyone tried this?


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/09/business/09cell.html

"Sprint is already offering one location-based service: driving directions
with your current location as the starting point. An operator will stay on
the line until you reach your destination, said Bill Elliott, director of
marketing, voice and integrated services at Sprint."


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Paper on link between int'l business travel and telephone traffic?

[Anthony Townsend]

Trying to track down the reference for the claim that int'l business travel
and int'l telephone traffic have grown together since the 1970s.

I thought it was Jess Gaspar and Ed Glaeser's 1996 paper on "Information
technology and the future of cities" but I don't think the graph I recall is
from that paper...

Does anyone remember this?


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Who coined "tyranny of geography"?

[Anthony Townsend]

Something makes me think it was Churchill... Does anyone know who first used
this phrase?


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Australia lags on internet front: World Bank - Breaking - Technology

[Anthony Townsend]

If they are claiming Japan has slow broadband too (see below) I wouldn't
trust the rest of the research, but maybe worth a look at an rate

My experience is that avg DSL speeds in Japan are > 10 Mbps, as in Korea


http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/australia-lags-on-internet-front-world-b
ank/2006/03/10/1141701658354.html

Australia lags on internet front: World Bank

March 10, 2006 - 6:23AM

Australian internet users are barely moving along the information
superhighway compared with other nations, a study shows.

A report by the World Bank has Australia well behind other developed nations
in terms of broadband internet speed - a key factor in modern-day business
and essential to accessing new features on the web such as movie and music
downloads and telephone calls.

Official figures cited in the report showed that per head of population,
Australia's broadband internet speed was just over one megabits per second
(mbps).

The figure was significantly down compared with Britain (13 mbps), France
(8.4 mbps), Germany (6.85 mbps) Canada (6.8 mbps) and the United States (3.3
mbps), but was similar to Japan.

But internet costs were relatively cheap, costing just under $25 a month in
Australia, compared with Japan ($29), Britain ($33), the US ($20.50) and
Canada ($17).

The figures on internet speed are likely to add weight to Labor's argument
that many Australians only have access to "fraudband" - broadband internet
access at 256kbps - and the nation should aim for at least a 10mbps standard
delivered through a new optical fibre network.

While the government also would like to see the next generation broadband
network rolled out, it points to private companies such as iiNet and
Internode already providing services up to 24mbps in some city areas via the
existing copper-wire network.

The study contradicts recent government statements about the popularity of
high-speed internet connections.

Although the government is claiming close to three million broadband
subscriptions, the report said Australia had only 77 broadband connections
for every 1,000 people.

This was lower than Canada (165), Japan (146), United States (129), France
(109) and Britain (103), but close to Germany's 84 connections per 1000
people.

But Australians are among the top users of mobile phones, with 887 per 1000
people.

The figure was higher than most European nations, as well as Japan and the
US, but lower than Britain which has more than one mobile per person - a
ratio of 1,042 to 1000.

The high take up of mobiles in Australia may be due to the fact that mobile
phone packages and calls are relatively cheap, compared with other
countries.

A bundle of mobile services cost $17.80 a month, well below Germany's
$30.60, but higher than the US ($15) and budget-priced Canada ($9).

The report - which examined telecommunications and information technology in
150 countries - ranked majority-government owned Telstra the world's 28th
largest telco, with France Telecom topping the list.

It said 130 countries had at least three competing mobile phone providers
but almost half of all countries retained monopolies on fixed local and
international calls.

AAP


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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Romani language on the Internet

[Anthony Townsend]

Really interesting story about how the language of the Gypsies/Roma people
is finally being written down on the Internet

"Romani is the language of the Roma, or gypsies. The language has many
dialects and is oral, rather than written. But the Internet is giving some
clearer shape to Romani. The World's Technology correspondent, Clark Boyd,
has the story."

http://audio.theworld.org/wma.php?id=03076


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] NE Asia Online - E-Paper Enters Practical Use

[Anthony Townsend]

E-paper could be one of those tectonic shifts in reality... If you though
advertising was choking the visual environment today, just wait when
everything is covered with programmable displays...

--


http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/neasia/003542

E-Paper Enters Practical Use

Equipment using electronic paper (E-paper) is becoming increasingly
prevalent. More companies have entered the market, and have been developing
a wide range of E-paper products, many of which are available now.

In December 2005, passers-by stopped at the sight of an unfamiliar object
that had appeared in one of the concourses of JR Tokyo station. Equipped
with six monitors, the object cycled through displays of news, weather,
station guidance and other subjects at about 5-minute intervals. The
displays offered good contrast, but were monochrome, and the appearance was
significantly different from the color displays with which everyone is
familiar these days. Upon closer scrutiny, it was possible to read:
"Demonstration test for electronic paper displays in progress."

In 2006 a variety of equipment using E-paper is likely to start appearing
here and there (Fig 1). In January of 2006, for example, Seiko Watch Corp of
Japan released a watch using E-paper for the face display, while Ishida Co
Ltd of Japan began marketing a shelf price tag using an E-paper display to
supermarkets and other retailers. Other recent developments have included a
practical, general-purpose E-paper display from Hitachi Ltd of Japan, and an
equipment clock using E-paper from Citizen Watch Co Ltd of Japan for public
facilities like stations and schools. Meanwhile Asahi Glass Co Ltd of Japan
is developing a practical public display terminal. And this is only the tip
of the iceberg.

After-Image Improvements
There have been practical E-paper examples in the past, but limited to only
a few applications. There are few manufacturers who can supply it, and even
the method developed by industry pioneer E Ink Corp of the US faced problems
with after-images. These after-images occurred after letters and symbols had
been displayed; they remained faintly visible after the display image had
been changed. This problem has been resolved lately, and a range of new
E-paper designs is being developed to the practical level by various
manufacturers, driving sample applications in a large number of fields (Fig
2).

E Ink has developed an electronic ink with improved after-image
characteristics, and has already begun to supply it to equipment
manufacturers. "The ink we supply now is the one with no after-images," said
Ryosuke Kuwada, vice president at E Ink. The wristwatch sold by Seiko Watch
from January 2006, the equipment clock sold by Citizen Watch from March
2006, and other recent developments all use this new electronic ink from E
Ink for its improved after-image characteristics.

A number of other electronic inks from manufacturers other than E Ink have
also evolved to the practical stage, and some equipment manufacturers are
beginning to use them. The shelf price tag system released by Ishida in
January 2006, for example, uses E-paper from SiPix Imaging Inc of the US.
"We began investigating the possibilities for E-paper in shelf tagging three
years ago, but E-paper technology wasn't well enough developed then. It is
finally usable now, including points like readability and quality
stability," said Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, general manager, ESL Business Manager at
Ishida. According to Kaoru Suzuki, project manager, Transportation Systems
Planning Dept, Transportation Information Systems Div of Hitachi, which
plans to release E-paper general-purpose displays in spring 2006, "We wanted
to be the first to ship them, and decided to tie up with an E-paper
manufacturer capable of providing practical technology then."

Low Power Consumption
The goal of equipment manufacturers adopting E-paper is to make it possible
to create equipment too difficult or impractical to accomplish with
conventional displays. The wristwatch from Seiko Watch, for example, has a
bracelet-type band, and the user can twist the display just like the band.
The shelf price tag system from Ishida uses E-paper with a plastic substrate
to combine lightness with breakage resistance. A liquid crystal display
(LCD) panel in the same application would be heavy and easily broken, and
therefore impractical, said a source at the firm.

In comparison with conventional displays, though, the most outstanding
difference is the low power consumption. The device only consumes
electricity when the display is changed, which could mean significant power
savings, depending on how the system is utilized. The equipment clock from
Citizen Watch, which updates the display once a minute, for example,
features power consumption "...about one-twentieth that of the same-size LCD
equipment clock, and only a few thousandths that of a backlight-equipped
clock," said Yasushi Kaneko, manager, Ep Project, Technical Lab, MHT R&D Div
at the firm. Thi

[telecom-cities] As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

I wonder what this means for the dominance of media hubs like New York, LA,
etc.

--


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/business/yourmoney/12sliver.html?_r=2&oref
=slogin&oref=slogin

March 12, 2006
As Internet TV Aims at Niche Audiences, the Slivercast Is Born
By SAUL HANSELL

ANDY STEWARD, a successful London computer consultant and sailboat racer,
became exasperated when trying to watch his favorite sport on television.
There were a few half-hour recaps of some major sailing races, but they were
always shown late at night.

Mr. Steward looked into creating a sailing channel on the Sky satellite
service in Britain, but his idea was soon dead in the water. He would have
had to pay £85,000 (nearly $150,000) to start the channel and £40,000 a
month (nearly $70,000), as well as the production costs. That was a lot of
money for an untested concept.

But in January, he did introduce a sailing channel, one that is rapidly
filling with sailing talk shows, product reviews, programs on sailing
techniques and, most important, intense coverage of the sort of smaller
races that don't make it onto traditional television.

His new channel, however, will not be available over the air. And it won't
be found on cable or even on satellite, at least not yet. The channel,
called Sail.tv, is broadcast only on the Internet, which enables video to
reach a much larger worldwide audience at a much lower initial cost than a
satellite channel. Because "we didn't have any idea how big the audience
would be," Mr. Steward said, he wanted to keep his expenses as low as
possible. "Internet television is an investment we can grow into," he said.

In the last six months, major media companies have received much attention
for starting to move their own programming online, whether downloads for
video iPods or streaming programs that can be watched over high-speed
Internet connections.

Perhaps more interesting ‹ and, arguably, more important ‹ are the thousands
of producers whose programming would never make it into prime time but who
have very dedicated small audiences. It's a phenomenon that could be called
slivercasting.

In 2004, Wired magazine popularized the phrase "the long tail" to refer to
the large number of specialized offerings that in themselves appeal to a
small number of people, but cumulatively represent a large market that can
be easily aggregated on the Internet. Plotted on a graph along with best
sellers, these specialized products trail off like a long tail that never
reaches zero.

Indeed, the Internet's ability to offer an almost infinite selection is part
of what makes it so appealing: people can find things that don't sell well
enough to warrant shelf space in a neighborhood music store or video rental
shop ‹ think of the obscure books on Amazon.com. The ease of digital video
production and the ubiquity of high-speed Internet connections are sending
the long tail of video into the living rooms of the world, live and in
color.

"The next wave of media is to unleash the power of serving people's special
interests," said John Hendricks, the chief executive of Discovery
Communications, which is developing a series of specialized video services.
"Every time I walk into a Borders bookstore, I spend a lot of time looking
at the magazine rack ‹ because staring at you are all the passions of
America. The bride who is about to get married, there is a magazine for her.
And for the person who is a little older, there are wonderful travel and
leisure magazines."

Already, there are specialized video services serving hundreds of
specialties, including poker, bicycling, lacrosse, photography, vegetarian
cooking, fine wine, horror films, obscure sitcoms and Japanese anime. There
is also a growing market for Webcasts of local news and entertainment from
every country and in every language, aimed at expatriates.

"We're adding two or three new channels a week," said Iolo Jones, the chief
executive of NarrowStep, a company in London that provides technology and
support for specialized Webcasts. Among his clients is Sail.tv, which says
it attracted 70,000 viewers in its first month.

NEARLY 15 years ago, when the advent of digital cable offered the
possibility of 500 channels, many people were skeptical that there would be
enough programs to fill them. But then came specialized broadcasters ‹
including the Speed Channel (for auto racing fans), the Military Channel and
Home and Garden Television ‹ and now cable and satellite systems are largely
full.

"It has become almost impossible for a channel to increase its distribution
the old way," said Lauren Zalaznick, the president of Bravo and Trio, two
cable channels owned by NBC Universal. "To get distribution it takes a lot
of effort and negotiation. You have to give up a lot to get very little."

Indeed, after DirecTV dropped Trio, a channel devoted to pop culture, among
other things, Ms. Zalaznick decided to move it from pay-TV systems to the
Internet. "To survive we had to fin

[telecom-cities] GSM World News. Press Release 2005 - Mobile Phones Play Vital Role In Aftermath Of A Disaster

[Anthony Townsend]

Doanload the report at
http://uk.sitestat.com/gsm/gsmworld/s?Disaster_Report&ns_type=pdf&ns_url=[ht
tp://www.gsmworld.com/documents/public_policy/disaster_relief_report.pdf]

-

http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2005/press05_36.shtml

Mobile Phones Play Vital Role In Aftermath Of A Disaster

GSM Association

Study says text is often best way to communicate in emergencies

London, UK - 19 December 2005: The mobile phone has become the device most
people turn to in an emergency. Mobile networks experience huge increases in
traffic immediately following a disaster and high-levels of demand continue
for many days afterwards, according to data in a study published by the GSM
Association (GSMA), the trade association representing mobile operators
worldwide.

The study by Enlightenment Economics shows how call volumes in Tamil Nadu,
in southern India, for example, were up to 30% higher than normal levels for
several weeks after the Tsunami last year struck that region. Similarly,
voice usage soared 275% and text volumes by 350% in the areas most affected
by the flooding in southern Germany in August 2005. Call volumes also rose
dramatically following the bombings in Istanbul in November 2003.

Importantly, while mobile phone operators experience similar surges on New
Year's Eve or on the occasion of a big football match, in a disaster
situation they usually have little time to prepare. If users send text
messages in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, rather than make voice
calls, they use less network capacity, making it more likely their message
will get through, and freeing up bandwidth for the emergency services.

"Anyone caught up in a natural disaster or other emergency is understandably
desperate to reach their loved ones, call for help or pass on important
information," said Tom Phillips, Chief Regulatory and Government Affairs
Officer of the GSMA. "Mobile phones are the best way to do that, but people
in a disaster zone should try to text, not talk."

Traffic data after disasters suggests that aid agencies and individuals
caught up in the mayhem both rely heavily on mobile networks to find out
information specific to their needs. The study, which examines communication
patterns after the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean, Hurricane Katrina, the Bam
Earthquake and several other catastrophes, found that mobile phones play a
vital role in reconnecting dispersed people and efficiently matching aid to
the particular needs of affected communities.

After a natural disaster, the study found that mobile phone networks can
often recover faster than fixed networks. Following Hurricane Katrina in the
U.S., for example, the use of portable base stations allowed operators to
restore coverage relatively quickly. Where necessary, mobile operators can
also often reroute calls around network problems. In cases of extreme
congestion, operators sometimes reduce audio quality so that more calls get
through.


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[telecom-cities] Satellites tracking infected bird flocks coming to U.S.

[Anthony Townsend]

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=1716820

ABC News
Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America
Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions -- and Warn That Infected Birds
Cannot Be Prevented From Flying In
By BRIAN ROSS

March 13, 2006 ‹ - In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of
Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start
storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a
deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of
birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage
around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary
of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia
and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle
with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a
senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And
it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."

Industry Precautions

America's poultry farms could become ground zero as infected flocks fly
over. The industry says it is prepared for quick action.

"All the birds involved in it would be destroyed, and the area would be
isolated and quarantined," said Richard Lobb of the National Chicken
Council. "It would very much [look] like a sort of military operation if it
came to that."

Extraordinary precautions are already being taken at the huge chicken farms
in Lancaster County, Pa., the site of the last great outbreak of a similar
bird flu 20 years ago.

Other than the farmers, everyone there has to dress as if it were a visit to
a hospital operating room.

"Back in 1983-1984, we had to kill 17 million birds at a cost of $60
million," said Dr. Sherrill Davison, a veterinary medicine expert at the
University of Pennsylvania.

Can It Be Stopped?

Even on a model farm, ABC News saw a pond just outside the protected barns
attracting wild geese.

It is the droppings of infected waterfowl that carry the virus.

The bird flu virus, to date, is still not easily transmitted to humans.
There have been lots of dead birds on three continents, but so far fewer
than 100 reported human deaths.

But should that change, the spread could be rapid.

ABC News has obtained a mathematical projection prepared by federal
scientists based on an initial outbreak on an East Coast chicken farm in
which humans are infected. Within three months, with no vaccine, almost half
of the country would have the flu.

That, of course, is a worst-case scenario -- one that Lobb says the poultry
industry is determined to prevent with an aggressive strategy to contain and
destroy infected flocks and deny the virus the opportunity to mutate to a
more dangerous form but one that experts say cannot be completely
discounted.

The current bird flu strain has been around for at least 10 years and has
taken surprising twists and turns -- not the least of which is that it's now
showing up in cats in Europe, where officials are advising owners to bring
their cats inside. It's advice that might soon have to be considered here.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures


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[telecom-cities] FW: Live Concert via 802.11(g) at Austin's SXSW

[Anthony Townsend]

Thanks Lon

And I remember way back when SXSW was just a couple of grunge-rockers
pushing their 45s and garage-recorded demo tapes

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Lon Berquist
> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:57:25 -0600
> To: Anthony Townsend
> Subject: Live Concert via 802.11(g)
> 
> http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/technology/03/13wif
> i.html
> (Free registration required to view)
> 
> Rhapsody in broadband
> Live concerts will flow between Austin and San Antonio in SXSW display of
> digital virtuosity and civic harmony.
> By Kirk Ladendorf
> AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
> Monday, March 13, 2006
> 
> If Austin and San Antonio are going to make beautiful music together
> economically, they had best be willing to collaborate and improvise.
> 
> Maybe they should watch Andrew Donoho and a big group of friends this week.
> 
> Donoho, a Web theorist for IBM Corp. in Austin, and others hope to link the
> two
> cities electronically by transmitting the live performances of two bands
> Tuesday night, which coincides with the conclusion of the South by Southwest
> Interactive show.
> 
> "We are just geeks who want to pull the two cities together and pool our
> resources," said San Antonio volunteer Dean McCall, who also helped organize
> the effort.
> 
> The project will demonstrate the power of new technologies, such as wireless
> broadband and high-definition video, that could be important to entertainment
> and business in the future. It's being done on a shoestring budget, with lots
> of volunteers, the assistance of both large and small companies and the City
> of
> Austin.
> 
> It's the centerpiece of a nightlong party sponsored by the Digital Convergence
> Initiative, a high-tech volunteer group affiliated with the Greater Austin-San
> Antonio Corridor Council.
> 
> At Tuesday's event, rock bands will perform in both cities, and
> high-definition
> video of their performance will be streamed along a network between the two
> locations. Donoho has dubbed the impromptu network the Comanche Bit Trail.
> 
> If it works as expected, it will demonstrate that networks powerful enough to
> handle high-definition data streams can be assembled quickly with existing
> resources. That would allow almost anyone, from researchers to entertainers,
> to
> send high-definition data streams at much lower costs.
> 
> The demonstration coincides with the first C3 Mobile Content Festival, which
> will honor creators of top mobile games, videos and software applications.
> 
> It all grew out of past discussions on how Austin and San Antonio artists and
> tech experts could work together to create something neat, useful and
> potentially profitable.
> 
> "Digital convergence" is the merging of computers, high-speed communications
> and
> the new information and services, such as streaming high-definition video,
> that
> use them. Digital Convergence Initiative says the Austin-San Antonio region
> can
> benefit by exploring and exploiting the opportunities that result from
> high-speed digital communications meeting up with high-speed, low-cost
> computing.
> 
> A coherent economic corridor between Austin and San Antonio long has been
> talked
> about but remains elusive. High-tech collaboration also is relatively unusual,
> which is something the organizers of the convergence party want to change.
> 
> Donoho, 45, a veteran IBM software and Web expert, expects the Comanche Bit
> Trail to continue as a low-cost "test-bed" for other digital media
> demonstrations.
> 
> Getting the broadband multimedia streams to flow up and down the network is
> relatively easy. They're carved up into small "packets" of video and audio
> data
> and sent on their way and must be reassembled on the other end.
> 
> The working parts
> The idea behind the Digital Convergence Initiative is to create business
> alliances as well as useful technology. After Tuesday's demonstration is
> completed, Donoho will develop software additions to IBM's Adaptive Web
> Services software that will make it easier to control an improvised network to
> deliver high-definition video, or other kinds of information, with the
> simplicity of clicking on the controls in a Web browser.
> 
> It's part of a broader goal of making increasingly better technology cheaper
> and
> more accessible.
> 
> Businesses, including television networks, already set up customized broadband
> computer networks to move big video files across the country. But this is
> something different, says Michael Korpi, a Baylor University communications
> professor who is helping out with the project.
> 
> 

[telecom-cities] Adapt to new technology or die,' Murdoch tells newspapers

[Anthony Townsend]

Also today, Knight-Ridder sold its newspapers




Adapt to new technology or die,' Murdoch tells newspapers

2 hours, 43 minutes ago

LONDON (AFP) - The newspaper industry needs to embrace the technological
revolution of the Internet, MP3 players, laptops and mobile phones or face
extinction, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch said.
ADVERTISEMENT

"Societies or companies that expect a glorious past to shield them from the
forces of change driven by advancing technology will fail and fall," he said
in a speech to the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers.

"That applies as much to my own, the media industry, as to every other
business on the planet. Power is moving away from the old elite in our
industry -- the editors, the chief executives and, let's face it, the
proprietors.

"A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered
when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it."

Murdoch, whose News Corporation empire ranges from newspapers and magazines
to television and film interests across the globe, described the 21st
century as "the second great age of discovery".

The greatest challenge for the traditional media now is to engage with more
demanding, questioning and better educated consumers, adapting their
products for new technology, the Australian-born media mogul said.

"There is only one way. That is by using our skills to create and distribute
dynamic, exciting content," he said.

"But -- and this is a very big but -- newspapers will have to adapt as their
readers demand news and sport on a variety of platforms: websites, iPods,
mobile phones or laptops.

"I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life but, equally, I
think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels
to our readers."

Murdoch sparked one of Britain's most bitter industrial disputes over the
introduction of new computer technology for journalists and printers.

In January 1986, he moved his British newspapers The Times, The Sun and The
News of the World overnight from their historic home on Fleet Street,
central London, to a purpose-built facility in Wapping, in the east of the
capital.

It was credited by some with not only breaking the stranglehold of print
unions on a hitherto unprofitable industry crippled by strikes but paving
the way for developments such as colour printing, supplements and websites.


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[telecom-cities] TR: A Supergrid for Europe

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/wtr_16595,296,p1.html

Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A Supergrid for Europe

A radical proposal for a high-tech power grid could make possible the
continent's vast expansion of renewable energy sources.

By Peter Fairley

Europe has big plans for greatly expanding its renewable energy sources, but
there's a problem: weak connections between a patchwork of national power
grids. The situation is particularly problematic for wind power, because
smaller, isolated grids have more difficulty absorbing the variable power
generated by wind farms.

Last month a Dublin-based wind-farm developer, Airtricity, and Swiss
engineering giant ABB began promoting a bold solution to the continent's
power grid bottlenecks: a European subsea supergrid running from Spain to
the Baltic Sea, in which high-voltage DC power lines link national grids and
deliver power from offshore wind farms. When the wind is blowing over a wind
farm on the supergrid, the neighboring cables would carry its power where
most needed. When the farms are still, the cables will serve a second role:
opening up Europe's power markets to efficient energy trading.

The result would be a more integrated and thus more competitive European
market, delivering power at lower prices. And it would enable Europe's grid
to safely accommodate even more clean, but highly variable wind power. That
accommodation will be needed because the European Union has set a target of
21 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and much of this
will come from wind farms. "The primary benefit of the supergrid is that it
aggregates wind power across geographically dispersed areas, and, by doing
so, it smoothes the output of those wind farms," says Chris Veal, the
Airtricity director promoting the supergrid. "If the wind isn't blowing in
the Irish seas, it's likely to be blowing in the North Sea or the Baltic.
The wind is always blowing somewhere."

By solving two problems at once -- interlinking grids and providing hookups
for more offshore wind farms -- Veal thinks Airtricity has found a solution
that's economically feasible. "It's something the market can do," he says.

Airtricity proposes to start by building a massive 20 billion euro ($23.8
billion) project in the North Sea. Last November, Swiss-based ABB completed
a study mapping out the power links for a group of wind farms that
Airtricity would like to build in the southern half of the North Sea.
(Airtricity is vague on the exact location, since it is still staking claim
to the seabed, which lies in the U.K., German, and Dutch waters.) The wind
farms would produce 10,000 megawatts of electricity -- 50 times more than
today's biggest offshore farms.

A 5,000 megawatt DC power line would carry power west to the U.K., and a
second 5,000 megawatt line would run east to continental Europe, perhaps to
the Netherlands. When the wind is too calm to produce power -- about 60
percent of the time at Airtricity's North Sea sites -- the lines would go
into interconnect mode, carrying 5,000 megawatts of electricity in either
direction. This would, for example, more than double the U.K.'s
energy-trading capacity, making that country's grid more stable and giving
its consumers access to a wider range of power producers.

This flexible DC network would be made possible by digitally controlled,
high-voltage DC power converters, a technology that has been entering the
market over the past five years. The key, says ABB project manager Lars
Stendius, is the newer technology's ability to reverse a line's current
without changing the "polarity" of its voltage.

Veal says the ambitious project would take five years to build and
construction could start as soon as 2010. At the moment, Airtricity is
looking for partners to help finance it, including transmission players who
could profit from the proposed energy trading.

Hydropower could play a key role, too. Gregor Czisch, an energy systems
modeling expert at the University of Kassel in Germany, says the benefits of
a European supergrid linking Mediterranean and North Sea wind farms with
Norway's immense hydropower reservoirs would be "considerable." Those
reservoirs could be tapped during periods of low wind, providing a renewable
backup to the wind power.

But, to Czisch, solidifying the European grid is just a first step. His
optimization studies show that the benefits of the supergrid multiply if one
extends high-voltage DC lines beyond Europe to North Africa and the Middle
East. By doing so, he says, one could ensure that there was always enough
output from renewable sources, such as wind plants and solar panels, to
power an area spanning 50 countries and 1.1 billion people.

In Czisch's visionary scenarios, wind power alone provides 70 percent of the
region's total power, thanks largely to excellent wind resources in Egypt
and Morocco that flow more powerfully and more consistently than Europe's.
And it's affordable: including the power lines, Czi

[telecom-cities] Prosper: The online marketplace for people-to-people lending

[Anthony Townsend]

Another example of urban streetlife going online - peer-to-peer loan online
loan sharking!



http://www.prosper.com/public/welcome/default.aspx



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[telecom-cities] Re: Metro Wi-Fi Networks To Grow 8,400% By 2010

[Anthony Townsend]

Hah!

How can they be so sure it won't grow by 8,500% instead?



Lon Berquist ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote @ 3/16/06 1:32 PM:

> 
> March 15, 2006
> 
> Metro Wi-Fi Networks To Grow 8,400% By 2010: Report
> http://www.networkingpipeline.com/news/181503866;jsessionid=OMUSXGLGROFUKQSNDB
> OCKICCJUMEKJVN
> 
> By Networking Pipeline Staff
> By 2010, municipal Wi-Fi networks will cover 126,000 square miles (over
> 325,000
> square km) worldwide, an increase from about 1,500 square miles in 2005 (3885
> square kilometers), says a new report from ABI Research.
> 
> More than one million wireless mesh routers, generating revenues of over $1.2
> billion, will be shipped in 2010 to service those networks, ABI concludes.
> 
> ABI says the growth of municipal Wi-Fi is being driven by several trends,
> including use of the wireless networks for public safety and increased
> efficiency. In addition, alternative ISPs view see Wi-Fi mesh networking as an
> inexpensive way to compete with incumbent service providers, and to provide
> broadband access to underserved areas. In addition, cable companies may
> ultimately turn to providing municipal Wi-Fi networks as a way to compete with
> telecos.
> 
> 
> ABI Press Release
> http://www.abiresearch.com/abiprdisplay.jsp?pressid=613
> 
> 
> 
> 


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[telecom-cities] NY Daily News - "N.Y.C.'s crime fight to get more eyes"

[Anthony Townsend]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

N.Y.C.'s crime fight to get more eyes

BY ALISON GENDAR and MICHAEL SAUL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

New Yorkers, get ready for your closeup.

The NYPD is installing 505 surveillance cameras around the city - and
pushing to safeguard lower Manhattan with a "ring of steel" that could track
hundreds of thousands of people and cars a day, authorities revealed
yesterday.

The police cameras will constantly keep watch over neighborhoods plagued by
crime and monitor potential terror targets as the city moves to put another
1,200 cops on the street, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The exact locations of the cameras were not revealed, but the electronic
eyes will be set up in 253 spots, including many Operation Impact zones -
high-crime areas already targeted by teams of cops.

"They'll serve to reinforce safety already stabilized by Operation Impact,
and serve as a high-visibility deterrent and investigative tool in other
outdoor, public places," Kelly said.

Recording high-quality images, the electronic sentinels will help the city's
Finest track down criminals and terrorists as well as provide valuable
evidence to convict them.

Most of the cameras will be clearly marked so crooks know that their every
move is being recorded by the cops.

The NYPD is also testing audio sensors that would allow the cameras to point
in the direction of gunshots, sources said. The cameras will be put up in
Brooklyn first before spreading to other boroughs.

City Hall is paying for the cameras using $9.1million in homeland security
funds.

The NYPD also has applied for $81.5 million in federal aid to install
surveillance cameras, computerized license plate readers and vehicle
barriers around lower Manhattan, Kelly said.

The security measures would be similar to London's "ring of steel," which
gained worldwide recognition after that city's terror attacks of last July,
when police cameras provided images of the suspected bombers.

The NYPD has no comprehensive system to monitor the Financial District -
considered the nation's No. 1 terror target - and a team of five NYPD
experts visited London in September to get a look at the "ring of steel."

Aboveground, London has cameras posted at 16 entry points and 12 exits from
the City of London, an enclave that includes that city's financial district
and landmarks such as St. Paul's Cathedral.

The cameras capture images of license plates and drivers' faces. Officials
then run the license plates through a database of stolen cars and terrorism
suspects. Last year, the system read 37 million cars and got 91,000 hits,
leading to 550 arrests.

The NYPD will find out by the end of May whether it will receive the federal
money. New York officials have also discussed the possibility of creating a
similar surveillance system for midtown Manhattan.

Law enforcement and transportation agencies already have about 1,000 cameras
in the subways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional
3,100 cameras are monitoring city housing projects.

Thousands of other cameras at private buildings and apartment towers also
train lenses on New Yorkers and often provide valuable clues to cops.

But don't expect the NYPD to install its cameras without battling the New
York Civil Liberties Union. The watchdog group's associate legal director,
Chris Dunn, questioned the plan.

"Commissioner Kelly may be ready to launch us all into a surveillance
society, but we believe cameras are not a cure-all for crime and terrorism,"
Dunn said. "It is far from clear that cameras deter crime."



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[telecom-cities] Sprinkling sensors from the sky in disasters

[Anthony Townsend]

http://ubiks.net/local/blog/jmt/archives3/005167.html

Sprinkling RFID sensor tags from the Sky

The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) started
developing a system that allows for detailed information gathering about a
disaster area by sprinkling RFID sensor tags from the sky (possibly using
helicopters.) The sensor tags will be used to collect various information
about a disaster -- perhaps most importantly, if anyone is alive. The tags
are about several centimeters wide/high and equipped with heat, infrared,
and vibration sensors.

The plan is to sprinkle the tags at a disaster area where communication
infrastructure is destroyed (imagine a big earthquake) and use them to
detect the heat from fire and the heat and vibration from survivors' body
and send out the gathered data through a mesh-like network. The ministry
thinks that about 10,000 tags will be needed to cover an area as large as a
big airport. They aim at finishing their technology R&D by 2007 (and
deploying the technology in the "real" world.)


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[telecom-cities] Making Space for a Biotech Center - New York Times

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/realestate/commercial/22biotech.html

March 22, 2006
Square Feet
Making Space for a Biotech Center
By ROBERT SHAROFF

SKOKIE, Ill. ‹ The acquisition and subsequent redevelopment of a former
Pfizer pharmaceutical research facility here by Forest City, the
Cleveland-based developer, promises to quadruple the amount of speculative
office space available for biotechnology companies in the Chicago area.

Forest City bought the one-million-square-foot complex last spring for $43
million. Since then, the company has demolished 9 of the 13 buildings on the
23-acre campus, leaving about 700,000 square feet of offices and
laboratories. The company plans to build an additional 1.3 million square
feet of new space, also for offices and labs, over the next 10 years. Over
all, the project is expected to cost more than $500 million.

The goal, according to Gayle Blakeley Farris, president of the science and
technology group of Forest City, is to create something that the company
says is long overdue in Chicago: a biotech cluster similar to those in the
high-tech bastions operating in the metropolitan areas around Boston and San
Francisco.

"We think there's an opportunity for Chicago to become the third coast for
the biotech industry," Ms. Farris said. "There are a number of major
institutions here ‹ such as the University of Chicago, the University of
Illinois and Northwestern University ‹ where important research is going on.
But up until now, there hasn't been a critical mass of space available for
companies seeking to capitalize on that research."

According to a recent study commissioned by Forest City, there is a shortage
of speculative biotech office and laboratory space in Chicago. The city has
about 500,000 square feet, much of it in incubator facilities owned by
public entities like the State of Illinois.

By comparison, the areas around Boston and San Francisco ‹ the acknowledged
leaders in the field ‹ each have more than 11 million square feet. But even
much smaller cities like Madison, Wis., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., outperform
Chicago in this respect.

"The lack of space has been a stumbling block," said David Miller, president
of the Illinois Biotech Industry Organization, a local trade group. "What
has happened in the past is that a scientist could usually get a few
thousand square feet of space from a university or a corporation to pursue a
promising idea but the minute he or she got bigger and needed 10,000 or
20,000 square feet, it was a problem."

Scott Brandwein, senior managing director of the life sciences group of CB
Richard Ellis, the national real estate services firm, which is assisting
Forest City in leasing the Skokie center, agrees. "There are very few
options for companies coming into the market," he said. "There's never been
a speculative market here."

What speculative space is available generally leases for $20 to $30 a square
foot. Forest City is hoping to do better than that ‹ about $30 to $40 a
square foot ‹ for at least some of the newer space in the complex.

"We're targeting three types of tenants," said Michael Rosen, senior vice
president for new business development for the center. "The first is
international companies in need of space for a U.S. headquarters, the second
is companies that provide services to the pharmaceutical industry on a
contract basis and the third is new companies that are ready to leave the
incubators."

The facility currently is vacant except for the NanoBusiness Alliance, a
trade organization for the nanotechnology industry, which has about 500
square feet. Mr. Rosen, however, said that Forest City expected to announce
commitments for about 150,000 square feet of space soon.

One company looking at the project is Midwest BioResearch, a biotech
start-up based in an incubator facility owned by Northwestern University in
nearby Evanston.

"Our initial need is for 10,000 square feet but we could double that in a
fairly short period of time," said Mark Weston, a business consultant who is
advising the firm on real estate and financial issues.

Mr. Weston added, that, "From the standpoint of networking, product
innovation and creating new business, I think having a cluster of businesses
in one location is important." The drawback, predictably, is rent. "I
think," said Mr. Weston, "that both the lessee and the lessor will have to
come together in the beginning to get tenants in."

Forest City is also hoping to receive a lift from this year's Biotechnology
Industry Organization convention, which will be held next month in Chicago
for the first time. The convention is expected to attract about 20,000
attendees.

The Skokie project is part of a general push by Forest City into the biotech
market that began 20 years ago with the development of a
2.3-million-square-foot research park near the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in Cambridge. Over the last few years, the company has either
developed or announced plans for similar 

[telecom-cities] UPS slashed the time it takes to determine the least-expensive route from months to days to hours and wants to make that information available in real time

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticleSrc.jhtml?articleID=17
602194

UPS slashed the time it takes to determine the least-expensive route from
months to days to hours and wants to make that information available in real
time

By Beth Bacheldor,  InformationWeek
Feb. 9, 2004
URL: 
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=17602194

In the mid-1990s, United Parcel Service Inc. decided it needed a software
program to map its entire U.S. operations‹every pickup and delivery center
and every sorting facility, totaling more than 1,500 locations‹to find the
best routes to move more than 10 million packages and documents daily. But
there was a hitch. "It was thought to be impossible to model the UPS network
and optimize it," says Jack Levis, project portfolio manager with the
company's industrial engineering division.

Impossible because there are 15.5 trillion options for calculating every
possible route among just 25 points‹a job that would take the fastest
computer in existence 500,000 years to compute. So a group of UPS
researchers set about creating optimization software that would assess only
the most-feasible options and over the years whittled down the time to
figure out the least-expensive and shortest U.S. delivery routes from months
to just hours today.

Now, almost a decade later, UPS not only uses that homegrown software to
help answer questions such as where to put a new distribution center, but
it's planning by 2006 to give its 70,000 drivers unprecedented tools to
fine-tune the supply chain. If successful, the plan would change
supply-chain optimization from today's top-down, management-driven approach
to one that's essentially bottom-up, giving more information to the people
closest to the customer. UPS is investing $600 million in the initiative,
which includes state-of-the-art handhelds and new software and is expected
to save the company $600 million annually.



Operations research has become more important to UPS, Levis says (foreground
with Mohr on left and other team members).

Photo by David Deal
UPS says it has already reaped numerous payoffs from the millions of dollars
it spent on operations research that led it to build the proprietary ground
and air supply-chain-optimization technology, including saving hundreds of
millions of dollars on its air deliveries. In the next two years, it expects
more benefits, by giving drivers access to data from the
supply-chain-optimization models in real time via wireless handhelds. That
will let them adjust delivery schedules on the fly to deal with everyday
problems such as traffic and bad weather.

UPS's efforts are key in a fiercely competitive market. It holds the lion's
share of the ground-delivery market, but FedEx Corp., a company about
two-thirds the size of UPS with $33.5 billion a year in revenue, leads in
overnight deliveries. UPS and FedEx constantly one-up each other in
cost-cutting, service improvements, and new business ventures. (For more on
FedEx, see Time To Deliver, Jan. 12.)

Also a growing threat to UPS is DHL International Ltd., the leader in
cross-border express deliveries. It's making a big play for the U.S.
ground-delivery market, acquiring Airborne Inc.'s ground operations last
August for about $1.1 billion.

In this ultracompetitive environment, UPS has revised its company charter to
cite as its mission "synchronizing global commerce." That means helping
customers manage and coordinate the flow of goods, information, and money
throughout their supply chains. UPS for years has been using operations
research, a discipline that leverages mathematical algorithms to predict and
help improve the behavior of complex systems involving people, machines,
materials, and procedures. But the company's changing mission, which
increasingly encompasses global service across more than 200 countries, has
raised the importance of operations research. "There are 50 people doing
operations research here, and they're doing things that have never been done
before, that no one has ever accomplished," Levis says. "UPS's vision of
synchronizing commerce means that operations research becomes more and more
important as our customers ask us to do more and offer more specialized
services, and to be more integrated into their businesses." For example, UPS
has developed Web-based software for DaimlerChrysler AG so the automaker can
centrally manage all parts moving to and from more than 4,500 dealerships.

UPS is out front in developing its own high-powered systems, but more
companies are showing interest in optimization software. That's because
computers can now handle the massive number crunching that optimization
requires, and there's a lot more usable data‹generated by applications such
as enterprise-resource-planning or forecasting systems‹that can be used in
an optimization program, says David Simchi-Levi, professor of engineering
systems at MIT and co-author of Managing The Supply Chain (McGraw-Hill,
2003

[telecom-cities] BBC NEWS | Programmes | Crossing Continents | Rising Kolkata's winners and losers

[Anthony Townsend]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/4830762.stm

 Rising Kolkata's winners and losers
By Tanya Datta
BBC Radio 4's Crossing Continents

The Indian city of Kolkata - formerly Calcutta - is being transformed as
multinationals pour into the country's latest IT hub, but not everyone
stands to benefit.

Just north out of the city of Kolkata, lies a small, tropical hamlet where
children play among coconut groves and cows graze idly.

But the rural community of Jatragaachi Nutan Porli, which numbers about
1,500 people is set for a nasty awakening.

They have been told that they will be evicted from their homes to make way
for urban development.

Encircling them on every side are rapidly sprouting high-rise office
buildings and luxury residential apartments, part of a colossal, future IT
hub called Rajarhat.

The changing landscape is not just confined to this district.

Across the city once synonymous with Mother Teresa and filthy, urban slums,
there are signs an image transformation is under way.

The city's IT sector is growing at a rate of 70% per year, twice the
national average
Brand new motorways, chic shopping malls and cinema multiplexes are
springing up.

It is being called, the New Kolkata.

Both my parents come from Kolkata and I have been visiting this city for
almost 30 years, so I have watched it change.

It is not just the name of the city which has changed - officially altered
from Calcutta to Kolkata - in the last five years, I have noticed a growing
sense of confidence among its inhabitants.

And all the indicators seem to suggest this confidence is well placed.

The city's IT sector is growing at a rate of 70% per year, twice the
national average.

And multinationals are pouring in as red tape is slashed.

Militant politics

What is remarkable is that the aggressively capitalist, pro-market reforms
are taking place in a state that has had a staunchly Communist-led
government for nearly three decades.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Kolkata was famous for militant trade
unionism.

Strikes, lock-outs and traffic-paralysing marches were a staple of everyday
life.

But the resulting poor industrial relations accompanied by a steady exodus
of manufacturing and capital from the state had a disastrous effect on
Calcutta's economy.

By the mid-1990s, West Bengal's share of India's total industrial output had
plummeted to less than 5%.

But today, the state boasts the third largest economy in India and an
ambition to rank among its top three IT states by 2010.

It is no surprise then that recruitment is booming in the city.

Call centres

Ma Foi Management Consultants is the biggest human resources company in
India.

I met Deblina and Rajdeep in the shiny, modern Ma Foi reception.

Both were 24 years old, highly-educated and determined to get a stake in
Kolkata's thriving IT environment, even if that means working through the
night in call centres - something unlikely to go down well with conservative
Bengali parents.

"Maybe I'm working at night," said Deblina, "but I'm doing my job. I'm not
doing anything bad. That's what I made my parents understand.

"So, let me get those international brand names attached to my CV for the
sake of my career, for the sake of my development and my city's
development."

And in a revealing sign of the times, neither Deblina or Rajdeep cared that
the state was still Communist, as long as they could both get well-paid
jobs.

"I'm really not bothered about politics," said Rajdeep.

"Things are changing right now. Young people are not giving so much stress
to politics.

"They are giving stress to their career. They want financial independence.
They are not into politics anymore."

Foreign capital

We committed mistakes. Now things are changing
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya
Catering to the Westernised aspirations of the younger generation is the
reason cited by West Bengal's Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, to
explain why he, a committed Communist, is at the forefront of the campaign
to attract big business to Kolkata.

His mantra "Reform, perform or perish" has convinced national and
international companies that he is prepared to create a positive business
environment.

And he sees no conflict between his ideological beliefs and what he
practises.

"We committed mistakes," he said. "Now things are changing. Earlier we used
to say we wanted to nationalise all foreign capital.

"Now we think this is foolish. We invite foreign capital!

"I'm against consumerism... But for other people, for the young generation,
I encourage them.

"They need cars. They need good housing. They like to go to shopping malls.
They like to go to restaurants.

"But personally, I don't like this. I only go to bookshops."

Uncertain times

We have put down our roots here, but... what choice do we have?
Dilip Mallick, government worker
But, back in the village of Jatraagachi Nutan Porli, however, time is
running out.

So far there is little

[telecom-cities] The Korea Times : Kwangju Becomes Linux City

[Anthony Townsend]

Some of you will remember Kwangju as the industrial city at the heart of the
bloody 1980 labor riots that killed several hundred people

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/korea/story/kwangju/



http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200603/kt2006032117045611780.htm

Kwangju Becomes Linux City


By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter


The Korean government plans to pick Kwangju this month as the nation's first
``Linux City,'' where open-source software will become the mainstream
programs.

The Ministry of Information and Communication, which is in charge of the
project of boosting Linux, Tuesday revealed the plan about Kwangju located
in the southwestern part of the country.

``Kwangju was the sole bidder to meet the March 10 deadline to take up the
Linux City scheme. Our screening panel has examined the city's bid,'' said
Lee Do-kyo, director at the ministry.

``Our panel asked the city to complement its bidding documents in some
segments. Kwangju is likely to be selected as the Linux City this week or
next since it is the lone candidate,'' Lee added.

Originally, Taejon was the self-proclaimed hopeful to become the nation's
open-source paradise but the city failed to present the application ahead of
the deadline.

Should Kwangju be handpicked as a Linux City, it will be required to install
open-source software as a main operating system of their infrastructures, a
job which the ministry will support with funds and technologies.

In the long run, Kwangju will have to migrate most of its public desktop and
notebook computers away from the Windows program of Microsoft, the world's
foremost producer of software.

``The test city will prompt other regions to follow suit via demonstrating
that Linux can be the go-to operating system without any technological
glitches or security woes,'' Lee said.

To that end, the ministry seeks to invest 1 billion won ($1 million),
although the amount may change depending on the situation.

Together with Linux City, the government will also choose a ``Linux
University,'' another test bed for the emerging software that is an
alternative to the proprietary Microsoft Windows.

``Multiple domestic ivory towers applied for the Linux University initiative
and we will announce which university wins out later this month,'' Lee said.

Linux refers to open-source, free software that emerges as an operating
system alternative to the closed-door Windows program, which is flat-out
dominating the global market.

The underlying source codes of the new-borne software are open to the public
so that worldwide programmers are able to seamlessly upgrade them.

The attempt to build up a Linux-ruled area is not a first. Munich of Germany
is looking to embrace Linux and open-source packages on its 14,000 PCs in
place of the Microsoft operating system and office automation suites. 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Re: history of costs

[Anthony Townsend]

Band-X, if they still exist, may share this data with you.
It was a London-based bandwidth exchange



Shreyas Pandit ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote @ 3/17/06 5:19 PM:

> 
> does any one know where one might find a history of the costs for fiber
> optic cables,
> also the history of costs for say a T3(DS3).
> 
> many thanks,
> Shreyas
> 
> 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at 
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Old searchble archives at 
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] 8 Postdoc Positions in Emerging Pervasive Mobile and Wireless Networks @ Annenberg Center for Communication

[Anthony Townsend]

> 
> The Annenberg Center for Communication (ACC) (www.annenberg.edu) at
> the University of Southern California invites applications for up to
> eight postdoctoral positions and one visiting scholar position.
> These Visiting Research fellows will take part in a major multi-
> disciplinary research initiative to explore the ³The Meaning of the
> New Networked Age: Innovation, Content, Society, and Policy.² We
> welcome researchers from various disciplines including anthropology,
> architecture, the arts, business, communications, computer science,
> design, economics, engineering, history, international relations,
> law, library science, neurosciences, political science, rhetoric, and
> sociology.
> 
>   ACC is a research institute devoted to the study of new
> media from a multi-disciplinary perspective. We are in a period of
> fundamental transformation in the nature of the networks that connect
> people, information, objects, and locations. But, what does it mean
> and what, if anything, should be done to guide the process? The ACC
> research program will explore the drivers of these changes, their
> meaning, and their implications for business and government policy.
> 
>   The 2006-2007 theme investigates the structure and
> evolution of today¹s political, social, cultural, technological, and
> knowledge networks. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
> 
> * How new technology is transforming politics and citizen
> engagement worldwide,
> * Communication law and policy
> * New models of intellectual discourse and citation,
> * Peer-to-peer cultural production and distribution,
> * The emergence of pervasive mobile and wireless networks.
> 
>   The ACC intends to convene a multi-disciplinary cohort
> of scholars to focus on a topic of pressing concern not well
> addressed in more established disciplinary and departmental
> institutions. The visiting fellows will work with the ACC¹s senior
> fellows and also will be expected to pursue their research in
> residence at the Annenberg Center during the 2006-2007 academic year.
> They will collectively be responsible for organizing one conference
> and a monthly speakers series, and to attend two weekly Fellows¹
> seminars of graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty fellows on the theme
> of the meaning of the new networked age.  They may not hold any other
> appointment during the period of the fellowship.
> 
>   The postdoctoral fellowship is intended for scholars who
> have completed their Ph.D since 2001, but we also will consider
> researchers with at least four years of relevant, real- world
> experience. The ACC fellowship carries a stipend of $45,000 in
> addition to a limited amount of funds to support research and
> relocation expenses.
> 
>   The visiting scholar position is intended for a mid-
> career scholar with a well -established track record and demonstrated
> leadership and expertise related to the theme. The stipend will be
> commensurate with the scholar¹s current position. ACC will also
> provide a limited amount of funds to support research and relocation
> expenses.
> 
>   Applicants should clearly indicate whether they are
> applying for a postdoctoral position or the visiting scholar
> position.  Applications should include a CV, a cover letter including
> a personal statement, and a brief statement of research goals in
> relation to the theme.  Three letters of recommendation are to be
> sent directly by the writers (letters may also be faxed to
> 213-747-4981).  Address all application materials to Elizabeth
> Harmon, Annenberg Center for Communication, University of Southern
> California, 734 West Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7725.
> Email contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  The deadline for receipt in
> our office is April 30, 2006.
> 


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at 
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Old searchble archives at 
http://www.mail-archive.com/telecom-cities@googlegroups.com/
-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] New Orleans After Katrina: It Can Happen Anywhere

[Anthony Townsend]

> Two Articles on Telecom Reconstruction in N.O. - After Katrina
> 
> 
> 
> "Some reports on the state of communications infrastructure in New Orleans
> from
> 
> the city's CIO." With thanks going to Sean Donelan on Cybertelecom.com :
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> 
> 
> After Katrina, the only communication system still working was a wireless mesh
> 
> network
> 
> 
> 
> By Tim Greene
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,109662,00.html
> 
> 
> 
> MARCH 17, 2006 (NETWORK WORLD) - When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the
> only
> 
> communication system that hadn't broken down was the wireless mesh network
> 
> deployed in the downtown area to support surveillance cameras credited with
> 
> reducing the city's prestorm violent-crime rate.
> 
> 
> 
> Today it still performs police duties, but as the lone public communications
> 
> system left in the city, it also carries VoIP traffic that is the lifeline for
> 
> many city businesses, said the city's CIO, Greg Meffert.
> 
> 
> 
> The storm wiped out wireline phone service and cellular networks, and those
> that
> 
> it didn't destroy outright couldn't be kept up because the city couldn't get
> fuel
> 
> to the backup generators needed to keep the networks running, Meffert told an
> 
> audience at a session during Spring VON 2006 this week.
> 
> 
> 
> "We still have a third to a half of the city blocked out for telecom and
> power,"
> 
> Meffert said.
> 
> 
> 
> Now the wireless mesh system made by Tropos supports a radio network for
> computer
> 
> equipment in police cars as well as a free municipal Wi-Fi service. The city
> 
> never tested the network for its current use, but it had no other choice, the
> CIO
> 
> said.
> 
> 
> 
> "It's easy to try something new when you don't have to deal with the old
> network
> 
> because it's in the lake," he said.
> 
> 
> 
> The mesh creates a Wi-Fi cloud over the downtown business district and the
> French
> 
> Quarter, with the bandwidth segmented for public safety and public Wi-Fi.
> 
> 
> 
> "VoIP over Wi-Fi was the only chance we had for talking because it is
> 
> point-to-point and doesn't rely on sequenced switches like the ones that
> failed,"
> 
> Meffert said.
> 
> 
> 
> He said the situation is likely to continue indefinitely because the
> traditional
> 
> wireline phone companies say they will not rebuild in the city for a long
> time.
> 
> "We're letting this Wi-Fi technology become indigenous infrastructure to help
> 
> bring the city back," Meffert said.
> 
> 
> 
> He said businesses have no alternatives, so law firms are actually doing
> business
> 
> over VoIP out of coffee shops, "as long as it's in the cloud."
> 
> 
> 
> Four months ago, the city population was 50,000, and now it's 250,000. "The
> 
> wireless network is part of what's making them able to come back," he said.
> 
> -
> 
> 
> 
> [And a perspective from a recent visitor:]
> 
> 
> 
> Message in a Spray Can
> 
> By Jennifer Granick | Mar, 01, 2006
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.wired.com/news/columns/1,70307-0.html
> 
> 
> 
> Last weekend I went to New Orleans to visit my college roommate and celebrate
> the
> 
> first few days of the Mardi Gras Carnival season. She attended Tulane Law
> School
> 
> and moved back to New Orleans three months before Hurricane Katrina hit.
> 
> 
> 
> In those days immediately following the hurricane, I couldn't reach her. The
> 
> telephone lines and the cell-phone towers went down in the first few hours of
> the
> 
> storm and stayed down for days. Her office in the Central Business District
> was
> 
> also hit, so the e-mail address I had for her was offline. I had the number
> for
> 
> her parent's farm in Iowa, so I was able to find out from them that she and
> her
> 
> family had safely evacuated to Illinois. Within a week, she got a new cell
> phone
> 
> with a Chicago area code, and a new personal e-mail address. Thanks to modern
> 
> technology, we were talking again.
> 
> 
> 
> Without traditional means of communication, other residents who stayed closer
> to
> 
> home resorted to spray paint. Uptown, a block from the flood line, one person
> had
> 
> painted the plea "Call Betty" and a phone number. Later, the tagger came back
> and
> 
> modified the message to read "All Better."
> 
> 
> 
> On a house in the Ninth Ward, I saw "Ella Mae?" sprayed on the façade, with an
> 
> arrow pointing to her name in a different color paint and the exclamation
> "OK!"
> 
> Other homes were marked with addresses and phone numbers from other parts of
> the
> 
> country.
> 
> 
> 
> Rescue workers had also relied on spray paint. An eerie legacy of the
> aftermath
> 
> of the storm is that every house in the flooded areas, and some in the few
> areas
> 
> that did not flood, are marked with an X, the date rescue workers visited the
> 
> location, the agency visiting and what they found. Most of the houses have a
> 
> zero. But some say "1 DOA" or "3 dead" or "possible body." Rescue w

[telecom-cities] WSJ: Companies That Fought Cities On Wi-Fi, Now Rush to Join In

[Anthony Townsend]

> 
> Companies That Fought Cities
> 
> On Wi-Fi, Now Rush to Join In
> 
> 
> 
> By AMOL SHARMA
> 
> March 20, 2006; Page B1, wsj
> 
> 
> 
> Having tried to stop cities from offering cut-rate or free wireless Internet
> 
> access to their citizens, some large phone and cable companies are now aiming
> to
> 
> get into the market themselves.
> 
> 
> 
> Telecom and cable giants have traditionally been critical of city-sponsored
> 
> broadband initiatives, questioning their financial viability and, in some
> cases,
> 
> even pushing for state laws to bar or restrict them. Now, in an effort to
> compete
> 
> with similar initiatives by Google Inc., EarthLink Inc. and others, some of
> the
> 
> companies are changing their tune.
> 
> 
> 
> AT&T Inc., the nation's largest telecom provider, put in a bid March 7 to
> build a
> 
> wireless Internet service for Michigan's Washtenaw County with roughly 325,000
> 
> residents. Among cable providers, Cox Communications recently teamed up with
> two
> 
> companies to offer wireless Internet access in some Arizona cities, and Time
> 
> Warner Inc.'s Time Warner Cable has signaled interest in Texas.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Experts say the companies were forced into the shift in strategy. "It's
> 
> inevitable that municipal wireless is going to become prevalent in cities
> large
> 
> and small," said Craig Settles, author of the book "Fighting the Good Fight
> for
> 
> Municipal Wireless." "That can't be ignored. I don't care how much you dislike
> it
> 
> as a telco incumbent. You just can't get away from this wave."
> 
> 
> 
> Cities and small localities across the country have started offering their
> 
> residents cheap or even free access to the Internet either because their areas
> 
> aren't reached by regional telecom providers or because the available
> offerings
> 
> in their areas are too pricey.
> 
> 
> 
> More than 50 municipalities around the country have already built such
> systems,
> 
> and a similar number are at some stage in the process, including Philadelphia,
> 
> Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, according to Esme Vos, founder of the Web
> 
> site www.muniwireless.com, which tracks such projects nationally. By 2010, ABI
> 
> Research forecasts a $1.2 billion market for the wireless technology used in
> the
> 
> city systems.
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the municipal networks use the same wireless technology, Wi-Fi, that
> 
> provides Internet "hotspots" at coffee shops and airports. Small radio
> 
> transponders are deployed on public buildings, street lamps, and streetlights,
> 
> creating a network that consumers can connect to with their laptops almost
> 
> anywhere in a city. That network itself is connected to the Internet. The
> cities
> 
> often charge users around $15 a month for the service, though cities such as
> St.
> 
> Cloud, Fla., are opting for free access. That compares with cable broadband
> bills
> 
> that typically run around $40. DSL services from the large phone companies can
> 
> run as low as $15 a month for slower speeds, but speeds closer to cable are
> 
> roughly $30.
> 
> 
> 
> Those economics are a real threat to the large telecom and cable companies,
> which
> 
> is why they initially fought hard to stop city-based networks. But the telecom
> 
> companies' recent regulatory efforts have been unsuccessful. AT&T, for
> example,
> 
> lost a battle in the Texas state legislature last year and another last week
> in
> 
> Indiana. Last year, of the 14 pieces of legislation the telecom companies
> backed
> 
> in states, they scored only one victory, in Nebraska, according to James
> Baller,
> 
> a senior principal at the Washington-based Baller Herbst Law Group, which has
> 
> represented local governments on telecom issues.
> 
> 
> 
> The telecom providers had scored some successes in the past. Verizon
> 
> Communications Inc. won passage of a law in Pennsylvania in late 2004 that
> would
> 
> prevent cities in the state from offering paid Internet access unless regional
> 
> telecom providers refused to offer such service. Philadelphia was exempted
> from
> 
> the law. Several other states, including Missouri, Nevada, and Tennessee, have
> 
> laws restricting municipalities from offering telecom services in order to
> 
> prevent the government from competing with the private sector.
> 
> 
> 
> As they wage those regulatory battles, the large telecom and cable companies
> are
> 
> watching competitors jump in to offer municipal-based Wi-Fi services.
> EarthLink
> 
> inked a deal with Philadelphia on March 1 to offer service there by putting
> radio
> 
> transponders on 4,000 of the city's street lamps. The service will be about
> $10 a
> 
> month for low-income people, $20 a month for the general public. The company
> is
> 
> bidding in a partnership with Google in San Francisco to offer a service that
> 
> would be free at slow speeds, and would go for a moderate fee at higher
> speeds.
> 
> EarthLink said it has plans to enter many more c

[telecom-cities] Intel sets up venture fund for Brazil | CNET News.com

[Anthony Townsend]

http://news.com.com/Intel+sets+up+venture+fund+for+Brazil/2100-1014_3-605442
2.html?tag=nefd.top


Intel sets up venture fund for Brazil

By Michael Kanellos
http://news.com.com/Intel+sets+up+venture+fund+for+Brazil/2100-1014_3-605442
2.html

Story last modified Tue Mar 28 08:00:12 PST 2006

advertisement

Intel Capital, the venture arm of chipmaker Intel, has created a venture
fund that will invest $50 million in Brazilian start-ups, the latest step in
an effort to expand its business in emerging nations.

The fund will invest in a variety of companies but pay particular attention
to start-ups focusing on wireless technologies such as WiMax, said a
spokesman. Intel has already invested about $35 million in 13 Brazilian
start-ups, including Digitron, TelecomNet and Certsign. The new fund will
thus bring the total invested in Brazil to around $85 million. CEO Paul
Otellini is in Brazil for a series of meetings this week.

Brazil is part of the so-called BRIC powers, which also include Russia,
India and China. These four countries are expected to constitute four of the
fastest-growing regional markets and tech centers over the next few decades.
But, as one IBM executive said, there is a big difference between the BR and
IC parts of the equation, with crime, political instability and other issues
hampering the development of indigenous tech industries in Brazil and
Russia.

Sprinkling venture dollars to jumpstart a new market is a longstanding
strategy at Intel. Last year, Craig Barrett popped over to Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, to announce a $50 million fund concentrating on the Middle East. It
also has created funds for Russia, India and China.

In the past few years, the chipmaker has emerged as one of the largest
venture investors in the world. While Intel wants to obtain a financial
return on its investment, its venture funds largely exist to help create new
products and ultimately spur demand for new PCs or other products containing
Intel chips. The company has a large general fund as well as several
specialty funds.

The success of the specialty funds varies all over the map. For instance,
Intel created a fund targeted at companies developing technology for its
Itanium processor. After several years, however, Itanium is selling below
expectations. In 2005, a now-retired Intel Capital executive said that the
company would not likely be placing investments in start-ups in Russia had
it foreseen the most recent political scandals.

On the other hand, some of Intel's Chinese investments have already held
IPOs. Overall, since 1991, 160 of the companies in Intel Capital's portfolio
have been acquired while another 150 have gone public.


--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at 
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] Zurich = Silicon Valley Europe?

[Anthony Townsend]

Learned here that Google Europe HQ is here and expanding, and Yahoo is
considered/has decided (unclear) to relocate Europe HQ from Paris

Some local econ dev propaganda below



Zurich Named Best European IT and Telecom Infrastructure Location at MIPIM
in Cannes
Monday March 27, 1:55 pm ET

ZURICH, Switzerland and CANNES, France, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The city of
Zurich and the Greater Zurich Area have been elected winner and runner-up in
a business location competition organized by fDi magazine (foreign direct
investment), a unit of the Financial Times Group. The awards were held
during the world's leading real estate event, MIPIM, in Cannes, France.

The city of Zurich excelled among 89 European business locations and was
named European location with the best IT and telecommunications
infrastructure 2006/7. Crucial factors for the decision of fDi magazine were
the availability and speed of broadband internet connectivity and the
wide-spread use of mobile technology among the population.

Within Switzerland, Zurich had already won the title of "City of the Future"
and surpassed national competitors in 28 categories like business potential,
IT and Telecom infrastructure, human resources, transportation and quality
of life.

fDi magazine also honored the Greater Zurich Area and its location marketing
agency, Greater Zurich Area AG. The fDi jury in Cannes bestowed upon the
business region around Zurich the title of "Region of the Future"
Switzerland and named it runner-up for "Central European Region of the
Future."

"That we proved as attractive for foreign direct investment as many strong
Eastern European contenders makes us especially proud," said Sonja Wollkopf,
Chief Operations Officer of the Greater Zurich Area AG. "It underlines the
competitiveness of the Greater Zurich Area as a business, expansion and
investment location that has attracted companies like Google and Red
Herring."

About the Greater Zurich Area AG

The Greater Zurich Area AG, a nonprofit organization, is the marketing
association for the Greater Zurich Area business region. It recruits
international companies abroad and assists them with setting up companies
and making investments in the Greater Zurich Area. Its sponsor is the
"Stiftung Greater Zurich Area Standortmarketing," a public-private
partnership that was established in November 1998. Since that time, its
membership has grown to include the cantons of Aargau, Glarus, Graubunden,
Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Solothurn and Zurich, the cities of Zurich and
Winterthur, and several Swiss companies. http://www.greaterzuricharea.ch

-



--~--~-~--~~~---~--~~

TELECOM-CITIES
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-~--~~~~--~~--~--~---

[telecom-cities] FW: New Research from the New York Fed: The Topology of Interbank Payment Flows

[Anthony Townsend]

Kinda obscure but relevant to list

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Karen Carter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 16:23:30 -0500
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: New Research from the New York Fed:  3/29/06
> 
> 
> 3) ³The Topology of Interbank Payment Flows,² by Kimmo Soramäki, Morten L.
> Bech, Jeffrey Arnold, Robert J. Glass, and Walter E. Beyeler
> The authors explore the network topology of the interbank payments transferred
> between commercial banks over the Fedwire Funds Service. They find that the
> network is compact despite low connectivity. The network includes a tightly
> connected core of money-center banks to which all other banks connect. The
> degree distribution is scale-free over a substantial range. The authors find
> that the properties of the network changed considerably in the immediate
> aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
> Read the full report:
> http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr243.html

-- End of Forwarded Message


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[telecom-cities] Cyworld US launches

[Anthony Townsend]

Cyworld US Launches - Will It Topple MySpace?

Cyworld US, the American version of the popular Korean social networking
site, is rumored to be launching this week just launched a public beta.

UPDATE: it just went behind a private beta wall again - luckily, I grabbed
some screenshots (below). (There are larger images here and here).

UPDATE 2: I just figured out how to access the live site. If you use this
url, you should be able to gain access.

Having used the Korean version of Cyworld in the past, I can attest that
it¹s a fascinating place. In essence, it¹s a closed social network with some
blog-like features and its own internal economy. Each user has a
³mini-hompy² - a pixelled room that can be decorated with furniture,
wallpaper and other items. All these items must be paid for in Cyworld¹s
virtual currency, dotori (Korean for ³acorn²). If I remember correctly,
users can buy virtual currency using their cellphones, or purchase vouchers
in real-world shops. Users can also buy each other gifts. There is a huge
amount of pressure to be popular and have the best hompy. Unsurprisingly,
this has turned Cyworld into an enviable money-making machine - in September
2005, BusinessWeek reported that the company was making ³$12.5 million on
sales of $110.4 million². It¹s a high stakes game.

Judging by the information on the site, Cyworld US will be virtually the
same as the original Cyworld - the mini-hompy has become a ³mini-room², but
the premise remains the same.

So how will Cyworld stack up against MySpace? Well, I get the sense that the
demographic will be much younger than that of MySpace, perhaps more of a
rival to Habbo Hotel, the popular pixelated pre-teen hangout. And while
MySpace allows you to integrate external services into your page, Cyworld is
a closed platform that charges for most additional items. Clearly, this is a
very different model to most US social networks, and seemingly at odds with
the openness proposed by Web 2.0 and new media advocates.

But it may prove more successful than the US networks in one crucial aspect:
profitability. Monetizing social networks is a tough challenge, and the
internal economy may be a real bonus for Cyworld. What¹s more, by targeting
the youngest possible demographic, Cyworld has a good excuse to keep the
system closed (it could claim to be protecting its young users from the
outside world).

Cyworld is money-driven and sickeningly commercial. Some geeks simply won¹t
³get it², in the same way they don¹t fully comprehend MySpace and Facebook.
Nonetheless, I think there¹s a HUGE amount of money to be made here, and
Cyworld is seizing that opportunity. I¹ll be interested to see how this one
unfolds.


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[telecom-cities] Las Vegas and the bomb

[Anthony Townsend]

Too good to resist

-


US to test 700-tonne explosive
Mar 30 11:26 AM US/Eastern
Email this story   

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test
called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a
senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that
you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear
weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of
destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological
weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense
reporters.

"We also have -- are you ready for this - a 700-tonne explosively formed
charge that we're going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada," he said.

"And that represents to us the largest single explosive that we could
imagine doing conventionally to solve that problem," he said.

The aim is to measure the effect of the blast on hard granite structures, he
said.

"If you want to model these weapons, you want to know from a modeling point
of view what is the ideal best condition you could ever set up in a
conventional weapon -- what's the best you can do.

"And this gets at the best point you could get on a curve. So it allows us
to predict how effective these kinds of weapons ... would be," he said.

He said the Russians have been notified of the test, which is scheduled for
the first week of June at the Nevada test range.

"We're also making sure that Las Vegas understands," Tegnelia said.



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[telecom-cities] Re: Zurich = Silicon Valley Europe?

[Anthony Townsend]

Thanks for the more detailed info.


Riad Lemhachheche ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote @ 3/29/06 5:47 PM:

> Each couple of years, there is a new candidate.
> I am not sure they will be a Silicon Valley Europe anytime soon.
> Nice/Sophia-Antipolis and Dublin would be the strongest candidates, though.
> Barcelona, Zurich, Stockholm, Munich and London/Redding would also be good
> candidates.
> 
> Red Herring has a special report on the Silicon Valley and how nobody has
> managed to copy the concept yet.
> http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15345&hed=The+Valley:+from+Afar
> 
> While Google R&D Europe is in Zurich, Google Europe HQ is in London and is
> apparently having some trouble recruiting.
> 
> Google struggles to find enough British
> staff<http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article349229.ece>from
> the Independent finds that while Google may be one of the most desired
>> places to work in the United States, in the UK, Google is struggling to find
>> new engineering talent. The theory as to why Google cannot attract the
>> talent they desire in Britain is because the candidates possibly feel they
>> may have to move to California in the long run of their Google tenure.
> 
> 
> http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/060306-103243
> 
> Yahoo Europe HQ was relocated to Ireland last year and they just opened
> their R&D labs in Barcelona so I think it is quite unlikely that they will
> relocate again in Zurich.
> 
> Does anybody have any pointer on studies related to  professional mobility
> in Europe, compared to the US?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/28/06, Anthony Townsend < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Learned here that Google Europe HQ is here and expanding, and Yahoo is
>> considered/has decided (unclear) to relocate Europe HQ from Paris
>> 
>> Some local econ dev propaganda below
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Zurich Named Best European IT and Telecom Infrastructure Location at MIPIM
>> in Cannes
>> Monday March 27, 1:55 pm ET
>> 
>> ZURICH, Switzerland and CANNES, France, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- The city
>> of
>> Zurich and the Greater Zurich Area have been elected winner and runner-up
>> in
>> a business location competition organized by fDi magazine (foreign direct
>> investment), a unit of the Financial Times Group. The awards were held
>> during the world's leading real estate event, MIPIM, in Cannes, France.
>> 
>> The city of Zurich excelled among 89 European business locations and was
>> named European location with the best IT and telecommunications
>> infrastructure 2006/7. Crucial factors for the decision of fDi magazine
>> were
>> the availability and speed of broadband internet connectivity and the
>> wide-spread use of mobile technology among the population.
>> 
>> Within Switzerland, Zurich had already won the title of "City of the
>> Future"
>> and surpassed national competitors in 28 categories like business
>> potential,
>> IT and Telecom infrastructure, human resources, transportation and quality
>> of life.
>> 
>> fDi magazine also honored the Greater Zurich Area and its location
>> marketing
>> agency, Greater Zurich Area AG. The fDi jury in Cannes bestowed upon the
>> business region around Zurich the title of "Region of the Future"
>> Switzerland and named it runner-up for "Central European Region of the
>> Future."
>> 
>> "That we proved as attractive for foreign direct investment as many strong
>> 
>> Eastern European contenders makes us especially proud," said Sonja
>> Wollkopf,
>> Chief Operations Officer of the Greater Zurich Area AG. "It underlines the
>> competitiveness of the Greater Zurich Area as a business, expansion and
>> investment location that has attracted companies like Google and Red
>> Herring."
>> 
>> About the Greater Zurich Area AG
>> 
>> The Greater Zurich Area AG, a nonprofit organization, is the marketing
>> association for the Greater Zurich Area business region. It recruits
>> international companies abroad and assists them with setting up companies
>> and making investments in the Greater Zurich Area. Its sponsor is the
>> "Stiftung Greater Zurich Area Standortmarketing," a public-private
>> partnership that was established in November 1998. Since that time, its
>> membership has grown to include the cantons of Aargau, Glarus, Graubunden,
>> Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Solothurn and Zurich, the cities of Zurich and
>> Winterthur, and several Swiss companies. http://www.greaterzuricharea

[telecom-cities] RED HERRING | The Valley: from Afar

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=15345&hed=The%20Valley:%20from%20Af
ar

The Valley: from Afar

For many overseas, Silicon Valley has lost little of its cachet.
January 30, 2006 Print Issue

The world, as Thomas L. Friedman contends, may well be flat, but peaks and
valleys remain. Even viewed from China and India, the twin steamrollers Mr.
Friedman sees leveling the landscape of the new economy, Silicon Valley
still occupies lofty heights.

 

In centers of technology around the world, whether established or emergent,
³Silicon Valley² is a metonym for an entire ecosystem of technology and
finance, with its own infrastructure of support services and social
networks‹slued together by a culture that lionizes risk-takers, rewards
out-of-the-box innovators, and forgives failure.

 

Despite its obvious success, the model has not been successfully replicated
anywhere: not in Beijing, not in Bangalore, not in Stockholm or Tel Aviv‹and
not for lack of trying.

 

To be sure, innovation, talent, and capital have spread globally. A tangible
link to the Valley‹whether through technology, capital, or physical
presence‹is no longer the sine qua non for a high-tech firm, if it ever was.
None of India¹s three software outsourcing giants, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro,
had roots in the Valley: no venture backing from Sand Hill Road, no Stanford
spin-off technologies.

- ADVERTISEMENT -




 

But for technology entrepreneurs the world over, the words of Mirabilis
chairman and founding investor Yossi Vardi probably still ring true.
³Silicon Valley was the Mecca, it is still the Mecca, and it will be the
Mecca,² says the Tel Aviv-based Mr. Vardi, whose company created the popular
chat client ICQ, acquired by AOL in 1998 for a reported $400 million.

 

Making the Move

If the Valley is Mecca, then German-born Stefan Roever, 40, is one pilgrim
who has made the Holy City home. Only months after the company he
co-founded, Stuttgart-based Brokat Technologies, went belly-up in 2001, he
was at it again with a new company, Navio Systems, based in Cupertino.
Brokat made software for Internet and mobile phone financial transactions.
Mr. Roever¹s new company makes digital rights management software for
Internet commerce.

 

Mr. Roever was named one of the World Economic Forum¹s 2006 Technology
Pioneers. ³I had seen the environment in Silicon Valley and I was pretty
sure that if I was going to start over I would want to do it here,² he says.
³The entire environment is conducive to entrepreneurship and innovation.²

 

In Germany, ³profit is a dirty word,² according to Mr. Roever, and startups
are stymied by an overgrown regulatory environment, bureaucracy, and onerous
taxes. ³Very few people in Germany have ever built or been part of a team
that created a global technology software enterprise,² he says. ³If a new
global business like a Yahoo or a Google is going to be built, chances are
still pretty good that it is going to be built [in Silicon Valley].²

 

But Valley culture has been transplanted to parts of Old Europe, such as
England, and it is showing clear signs of taking root in other dynamic
economies. Emulation of the Valley formula is deliberate and deferential,
helped along by hundreds of European, Indian, and Chinese returnees,
sometime dwellers of the Valley¹s Santa Clara County who headed home to
start up tech businesses. But no one in China or India needs to be reminded
of the Valley¹s importance. ³There will never be another Silicon Valley,²
says Sridhar Mitta, the managing director of e4e, an Indo-U.S. software
outsourcing company.

 

Valley fever burns particularly hot in China. High-tech zones in major
Chinese cities vie to be recognized as ³the Silicon Valley of China.² In
northwestern Beijing¹s Haidian district‹a leading contender for that title,
with its concentration of top universities, technology parks, and new
economy companies‹one upscale housing development even calls itself Guigu,
Chinese for Silicon Valley.

 

The ³Old Gold Mountain²

Equally, Chinese high-tech entrepreneurs continue to seek funding from
Valley venture capital. And with 20-plus VC-backed companies from China
listed on the Nasdaq‹including the splashiest IPO of 2005, Baidu.com, which
went public in August‹who can blame them? What they give up in equity is
more than made up for by the legitimacy they believe funding by a big-name
Valley VC confers.

 

³It used to be ŒLet¹s go to the Old Gold Mountain¹ [a Chinese term for San
Francisco still in use today] and now it¹s become Œlet¹s list on Nasdaq,¹²
says Robert Lee, CEO of Dublin, California-based software and IT outsourcing
company Achievo, and chairman of the Asia America MultiTechnology
Association (AAMA), a Silicon Valley-based industry association.

 

For Chinese entrepreneurs, the road to Wall Street runs straight through the
Valley, and exuberance about the China market on the part of Valley VCs has
helped them on their way. But understanding of U.S. capital ma

[telecom-cities] FW: Meetro Press Release 2006-04-01

[Anthony Townsend]

A little April Fool's Day humor from one of Palo Alto's newest startups

-- Forwarded Message
> From: Paul Bragiel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 00:03:45 -0800
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Meetro Press Release 2006-04-01
> 
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> 
> Meetro Acquires Friendster
> 
> San Francisco, Calif. - April 1, 2006 ­ Meetro, the world leader in
> Instant Messaging software announced today it has entered into an
> agreement to acquire Friendster, one of many social software sites
> for keeping in touch with friends and hooking up with new people.
> 
> Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
> 
> "We're excited to be acquiring Friendster because we can leverage
> their web 2.0 technology," said Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro. "This
> acquisition gives Meetro another brand name in its warchest, similar
> to Infogrames purchasing Atari a few years back."
> 
> Friendster will provide Meetro users the ability to see who's looked
> at their profile to encourage a greater number of 'random hookups'
> without the need for alcohol. Leveraging Meetro's location-based
> technology will allow users to see other members in 'real-life' and
> avoid a common photo profile pitfall known as ³the angles.²
> 
> Bragiel finally remarks, "If you're still reading this and believe
> this, then you aren't good at spotting April Fool's jokes."
> 
> For more information, please visit http://www.meetro.com
> 
> About Meetro
> Meetro is a location-aware Instant Messenger turning traditional IM
> on it's side. It's photo and profile driven around your location,
> designed to facilitate real-time meetings with people locally. Meetro
> bridges the gap between traditional instant messengers and the next-
> generation local meeting place. Meetro works with AIM, Yahoo, MSN,
> and ICQ protocols.
> 
> About Friendster
> Friendster is the leading social site for keeping in touch with
> friends, and meeting new people. Friendster is a privately-held
> company based in San Francisco, California, backed by the venture
> firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.



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[telecom-cities] 10 MPH : Segway : Do your THING : Documentary

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.10mph.com/


The film: 10 MPH

10 MPH is a comical documentary that follows a pair of aspiring filmmakers
as they quit their jobs and turn a friend's ludicrous idea into a movie.

The impulsive purchase of a two-wheeled Segway scooter sets this story in
motion when the two friends decide to travel from Seattle to Boston at 10
MPH in an attempt to change their lives forever...

What ensues is a road trip like none other with a haphazard cast of
characters you could only find on a zany 100-day trek through America¹s back
roads. Each poignant story the two friends discover along the way inspires a
craving inside to go out and do that thing you're supposed to do.


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[telecom-cities] In a Wired South Korea, Robots Will Feel Right at Home

[Anthony Townsend]

 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/world/asia/02robot.html
 
NYT: In a Wired South Korea, Robots Will Feel Right at Home

April 2, 2006
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

SEOUL, South Korea ‹ South Korea, the world's most wired country, is rushing
to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life.

The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72
percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of
scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society.

By 2007, networked robots that, say, relay messages to parents, teach
children English and sing and dance for them when they are bored, are
scheduled to enter mass production. Outside the home, they are expected to
guide customers at post offices or patrol public areas, searching for
intruders and transmitting images to monitoring centers.

If all goes according to plan, robots will be in every South Korean
household between 2015 and 2020. That is the prediction, at least, of the
Ministry of Information and Communication, which has grouped more than 30
companies, as well as 1,000 scientists from universities and research
institutes, under its wing. Some want to move even faster.

"My personal goal is to put a robot in every home by 2010," said Oh Sang
Rok, manager of the ministry's intelligent service robot project.

Reeling from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, South Korea decided that
becoming a high-tech nation was the only way to secure its future.

The government deregulated the telecommunications and Internet service
industries and made investments as companies laid out cables in cities and
into the countryside. The government offered information technology courses
to homemakers, subsidized computers for low-income families and made the
country the first in the world to have high-speed Internet in every primary,
junior and high school.

As with robots and most other specific technologies, the government has had
a strong hand in guiding businesses and research centers.

Failures have occurred ‹ most spectacularly in biotechnology, when the
cloning scientist, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, was exposed as a fraud ‹ but the
successes are many.

South Koreans use futuristic technologies that are years away in the United
States; companies like Microsoft and Motorola test products here before
introducing them in the United States.

Since January, Koreans have been able to watch television broadcasts on
cellphones, free, thanks to government-subsidized technology. In April,
South Korea will introduce the first nationwide superfast wireless Internet
service, called WiBro, eventually making it possible for Koreans to remain
online on the go ‹ at 10 megabits per second, faster than most conventional
broadband connections.

South Korea, perhaps more than any other country, is transforming itself
through technology. About 17 million of the 48 million South Koreans belong
to Cyworld, a Web-based service that is a sort of parallel universe where
everyone is interconnected through home pages. The interconnectivity has
changed the way and speed with which opinions are formed, about everything
from fashion to politics, technology and social science experts said.

Chang Duk Jin, a sociologist at Seoul National University who has studied
the effects of technology on society, said it had profoundly influenced
domestic politics. Two years ago, after the opposition-led National Assembly
impeached President Roh Moo Hyun, a consensus began forming on the Internet
that the move was politically motivated ‹ two hours after the vote took
place, Mr. Chang said.

"That quickly led to mass demonstrations," he said. "That kind of thing had
never happened in Korea before. Everyone is connected to everyone else, so
issues spread very fast and kind of unpredictably."

There has been at least one unpredictable side effect: fierce witch hunts.
In a case that caused national soul-searching, a woman riding the subway
with her dog last year refused to clean up after it defecated in the car.
One angry passenger photographed her with a camera-equipped cellphone and
later posted the photos. Soon, all of wired South Korea seemed to be on the
hunt for "Dog Poop Girl."

Several misidentified women were verbally attacked, and finally the woman
herself was identified on the Internet and humiliated as the topic of
countless online discussions.

Such problems have led the government to consider curbing anonymity on the
Internet, a proposal that has drawn strong opposition here. In another
response, in February, the government released a 256-page "IT Ethics"
textbook for junior and high school students. Teachers are expected to spend
30 hours instructing from the textbook, whose chapters include "Healthy
Mobile Phone Culture," and "Protecting Personal Privacy."

"Education has lagged behind the technology," said Park Jung Ho, a professor
of computer science at Sunmoon University here.

The government, though, is pushing ahead relentlessly. It has drawn a

[telecom-cities] Telegraph - 'Drug ring phone cards on sale in jail"

[Anthony Townsend]

I never noticed this before, but isnt it odd that we still have a newspaper
out there called "the Daily Telegraph"!?




Drug ring phone cards on sale in jail
By Jasper Copping
(Filed: 02/04/2006)

The war against drugs is being undermined by a black market in mobile phone
sim cards containing details of drug dealing franchises, it is feared.

Recently jailed prisoners are selling the cards to inmates nearing release
for up to £20,000.

Each contains a microchip storing the telephone numbers of drug suppliers
and addicts, which were once in the memory of the dealer's phone. That
information provides access to an established drug-dealing network, with the
potential to earn thousands of pounds a week.

Experts are worried that the illicit trade is hampering police efforts to
close down drug networks because a criminal, armed with the information on
the sim (subscriber identity module) card, can replace a dealer who has been
locked up.

One prison officer, who asked not to be named, told the Sunday Telegraph
that the market in sim cards was growing rapidly and that they were changing
hands for up to £20,000.

"Sim cards have become big currency in prison because they can contain the
key to a criminal enterprise," he said. "It is the equivalent of handing
someone a ready-made business.

"If someone goes to prison for a long time because of a drugs offence it
makes sense for them to sell their sim card. The addicts will not be too
choosy about where they get their drugs from."

Sim cards, like mobile phones, are banned in prison but they can be smuggled
in and kept by inmates to be sold on. Prison officers have been asked to
look for the cards but, because of their size, they are difficult to detect.

The prison officer added: "Sim cards are very small and easy to hide.
Prisoners can keep them in their mouths and all sorts of places without fear
of being detected." The cards, which can work in any mobile phone, are most
valuable when a drug dealer has only recently been arrested. Money for the
cards usually changes hands through contacts outside prison.

Martin Barnes, the chief executive of the drug information charity
DrugScope, said: "Unfortunately, drug markets can prove extremely lucrative
for upper-end dealers."

A Home Office spokesman said: "There are rigorous search systems in prisons
for prisoners and visitors to prevent mobile phones and sim cards entering
prisons. There are occasional breaches in security and these items do find
their way into prisons. It is now well established that prisoners can, and
do, secrete these items in body cavities."


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[telecom-cities] Smart Manholes

[Anthony Townsend]

http://ubiks.net/local/blog/jmt/archives3/005208.html
Date: 3/28/2006 12:51 AM
 
Author: konomi

Pasco, bitcorn, and KDDI Network&Solutions announced that they will together
develop a so-called Intelligent Manhole System. RFID tags will be embedded
in manhole covers in order to support critical tasks in a disaster
situation. 

The tagged manhole covers are for example used to provide information about
things buried underground like sewer pipes. Since the sytem is linked to a
local government's GIS system, rescue workers can use a handheld RFID reader
(possibly bluetooth-enabled) and mobile phones/PDAs to display the data
stored in the tags as well as the relevant information from the GIS system
(e.g., photo maps, scheme drawings of a city's lifeline infrastructure).
Such an information system may help repair damaged lifeline infrastructure
quicker


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[telecom-cities] 2006 Design Challenge : An LA Adventure

[Anthony Townsend]

The urban command vehicle for the masses - pics are definitely worth a look

---

http://www.laautoshow.com/2006/designla/popGmc.html

GMC PAD
GM West Coast Advanced Design Studio
Designers: Steve Anderson, Senon B. Franco III, Jay Bernard, Phil Tanioka,
Sidney Levy, Brian Horton, Alessandro Zezza, Christine Ebner, Frank Saucedo

Why commute? Adapt. That¹s the thinking behind the GMC PAD, which offers an
innovative look at an urban loft with mobility. It¹s a home ownership
concept that enables cultural and geographic freedom for the modern city
dweller. The GMC PAD features a diesel-electric hybrid system for propulsion
while in DriveMode, and serves as a generator for the onboard power grid for
LifeMode. The media rich environment is unlike any other, and comes with an
endless variety of entertainment, information and security options. With the
GMC PAD, home is where you want it. And commuting is what other people do.


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TELECOM-CITIES
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[telecom-cities] TR - PCs for the Masses

[Anthony Townsend]

Some of you may be familiar with the People & Practices group at Intel,
especially Genevieve Bell's ethnographic studies, on which a lot of these
product decisions are based...



Tuesday, April 04, 2006
PCs for the Masses?

Intel is making computers specifically designed for users in poor countries.
Will anyone want them?

By Michael Fitzgerald

The promise isn't quite a PC in every home, but Intel's Discover the PC
initiative gives a boost to efforts to make personal computing more
practical for far more of the world's population.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced the initiative last week in Mexico City,
the targeted first market for the new PC. Intel and Telmex, the Mexican
phone company, have partnered to distribute the PC. The PC will include a
hard drive, four USB ports, and built-in networking but will not be as large
as conventional PCs. Intel and Telmex did not announce a price; the PC will
be available in the second half of the year.

With the announcement, Intel joined a growing movement to create personal
computers that fit the needs of developing countries better than
conventional PC technology. In January 2005, MIT's Nicholas Negroponte gave
the movement some momentum when he presented plans for a $100 laptop that
would run the Linux operating system and could be powered by a hand crank.
That machine is targeted for release by year's end and would use processors
from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices. AMD has also introduced a device it
calls the Personal Internet Communicator, which costs about $250 with a
monitor.

Intel says that while Mexico will be the first market for its low-cost PC,
it will work with governments and telecom providers in Brazil, Egypt, Ghana,
and Nigeria to bring similar devices to market by year's end.

Intel's project is little different from previous industry efforts to bring
PCs to lower-income people and regions. By and large, these efforts have not
been successful, notes Roger Kay, CEO of Endpoint Technologies, a
personal-computing market research firm in Wayland, MA. He cites, for
instance, Gateway's effort to finance the PC purchases of low-income
Americans, which wound up being a write-down for the company.

"Even before Negroponte came out with the $100 PC, other companies were
promoting some version of the same concept," Kay says. He thinks, however,
that companies are now taking a longer-term perspective -- and have to.
"There are still five billion people who don't have any access to PCs," Kay
says.

Intel's announcement reflects several years of research on the needs of
users in poor countries. That research was initially conducted under the
project name The Next 10 Percent and began when 10 percent of the world's
population had PCs, says Tony Salvador, director of ethnography and design
research in Intel's Emerging Markets Platform unit.

Friday's announcement was only one of several steps Intel is taking to
encourage technology adoption in nontraditional markets. On Wednesday, Intel
unveiled a product it has demonstrated several times in recent months -- the
Community PC, which is designed for use in rural India.

That PC reflects design ethnography of the sort Salvador practices. The
Community PC is rugged, designed to withstand temperatures of up to 45
degrees Celsius and equipped with a special monitor and filters to deal with
dust. It comes with a software-restore key that will rebuild the system's
software at a keystroke if the PC fails. Finally, it can use a car battery
as a backup power source, which is useful in areas where power failures are
a daily fact of life. The PC will switch automatically between AC and DC
power.

The Community PC costs less than 10,000 rupees (about $225), with a 15-inch
color monitor, a 40-gigabyte hard disk, and 128 megabytes of RAM. Though
it's more than double the projected cost of Negroponte's $100 PC, Salvador
argues that it "is a concrete example of what it really costs" to bring
personal computing to regions poor both economically and in basic power
infrastructure. "How do you service it? How do you connect it? Those costs
have to be factored in."


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TELECOM-CITIES
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[telecom-cities] The Korea Times : Free Mobile Broadcasting Starts on Inchon Subway

[Anthony Townsend]

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200603/kt2006032817293010160.htm

Free Mobile Broadcasting Starts on Inchon Subway


By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter


A passenger watches a TV program on a cell phone on an Inchon subway train,
Tuesday, as terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting becomes available.

Koreans are now able to enjoy terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting
(DMB), the free video-on-the-move services, even at some underground subway
lines and stations.

The nation's six terrestrial DMB broadcasters Tuesday completed installing
devices to enable commuters on Inchon subway lines to watch videos there.

``This is the first time terrestrial DMB has become available on the
underground subway lines,'' said Kim Hyuk, an official at the private
Special Committee for Korean Terrestrial DMB.

``Roughly 200,000 daily commuters who take the Inchon subway lines will be
potential customers of terrestrial DMB offerings thanks to the expansion of
the service-enabled areas,'' he added.

Terrestrial DMB, which debuted last December, allows people on the road to
enjoy crystal-clear video, CD-quality audio and data via in-car devices and
handheld gadgets like cell phones.

However, the mobility-specific services have been inaccessible in the
underground subways due to an investment delay for gap fillers, which are
necessary for relaying broadcasting signals into the subterranean
environment.

That has been one of major disadvantages for terrestrial DMB in a
competition to attract clients against another go-anywhere TV format called
satellite DMB.

Video services based on satellite DMB, enabled by signals beamed from a
satellite, can be watched on all the subway lines in Seoul, Inchon and the
surrounding Kyonggi Province.

The six terrestrial DMB broadcasters plans to follow the suit of its
satellite-empowered competitor by building up gap fillers at all underground
subway lines in Seoul and its vicinity by June.

``To cater for the envisioned need for the on-the-move TV service in June,
when the German World Cup kicks off, we look to establish gap fillers at
subway lines before the football event,'' Kim said.

``Toward that end, installation of gap fillers has begun and up to 28.8
billion won ($29.5 million) will be invested,'' he added.

The expansion of terrestrial DMB is a two-track job _ on top of extending
its service areas underground, the government is keen to provide the
offerings nationwide.

``Terrestrial DMB services will be launched across the country in December.
The government appears to fix the exact scheme and roadmap to do so late
this month,'' Kim said.

Presently, terrestrial DMB services are available at mostly open-air areas
in Seoul, Inchon and Kyonggi Province, another shortfall in comparison to
satellite DMB, which can be seen in any open-air region in Korea.



[EMAIL PROTECTED]
03-28-2006 17:29


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TELECOM-CITIES
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[telecom-cities] MercuryNews.com | 10/05/2005 | Mix and mash-up: UNLIKELY MIXES ARE BIG IN CLUBS, ONLINE

[Anthony Townsend]

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/music/12816041.htm?so
urce=rss&channel=mercurynews_music

Posted on Wed, Oct. 05, 2005


Mix and mash-up
WHEN MADONNA MEETS SEX PISTOLS: UNLIKELY MIXES ARE BIG IN CLUBS, ONLINE
By Nerissa Pacio
Mercury News

At the Santa Cruz Blue Lagoon, DJ Yuma Tripp works the Friday night party
crowd with dance-happy creations that he's spent hours, days and sometimes
even weeks crafting to clever perfection.

He chuckles when he names his own top three favorites that have brought him
Internet renown among his fellow digital crate-diggers: Nine Inch Nails'
``Closer'' vs. Ace of Bass' ``All that She Wants''; 50 Cent's ``Disco
Inferno'' vs. the Ramones ``I Want to Be Sedated/Blitzkrieg Bop''; and Dr.
Dre and Snoop Dogg's ``Next Episode'' vs. the Champs' ``Tequila.''

Tripp is among the legions of bedroom remixers who've blown up the Bay
Area's red-hot mash-ups scene. While most of the DJs surface anonymously on
the international community's online hub, www.getyourbootlegon.com, Tripp
and others have started mash-up club parties from Santa Cruz to San
Francisco; DJ Party Ben hosts the ``Sixx Mixx,'' a weekly mash-ups radio
show on Bay Area station Live 105; and on Saturday, mash-up DJs Adrian and
the Mysterious D will be spinning sets at the Download Festival at the
Shoreline Amphitheatre.

Most mash-up artists agree that the amusement is in the do-it-yourself
challenge: splicing the most unlikely of lyrical or musical pairings to make
them somehow mesh. The results are new genre-blending, often tongue-in-cheek
MP3 tracks that are slapped onto the Web to be downloaded for free.

But even after sprouting from the blogging underground to dance-club hit
lists and finally to mainstream airwaves, some Bay Area DJs are finding
fresh ways to stir up the bootleg scene.

On a creative quest to elevate the art, also called bastard pop, Tripp
produced his first mash-up music video of the Nine Inch Nails-Ace of Bass
hybrid ``She Wants Animals'' and played it in September at the Blue Lagoon.

Clubbers were blown away. And now, taking the mash-up to the next level,
he's busy buying DVDs and using a software program (``Vegas'' by Sony) to
fuse the pirated videos on his home computer. By November, Tripp says he'll
have cut up enough videos to play a standing 30-minute set at his gigs to
visually rock his audio. Eventually, he plans to collaborate with other Bay
Area DJs for a video mash-ups tour.

``The novelty has worn off,'' says Tripp, 30, who has been a DJ for 15 years
and has seen the recent mash-ups craze evolve from a trend into a
full-fledged genre. ``It started off as an anti-pop music statement, where
people were tired of hearing Britney Spears, so they said let's stick
Britney over the White Stripes, or Madonna with the Sex Pistols. It's opened
up the way people think about music -- no one listens to one type of music
anymore.''

Videos, Tripp says, were the natural next step in the mash-up evolution. And
while he isn't the very first person to do it, it's still a relatively new
invention.

``They really let you see what musicians are being mashed,'' he says. ``So
far, I've gotten a great response.''

DJ John (Liechty) of Campbell quickly earned a reputation for his rare and
complex multi-song mash-ups posted on www.getyourbootlegon.com. After less
than a year on the scene, he was getting e-mails from club DJs asking to use
his tracks from Tennessee to Brazil. DJ and club promoters Adrian and the
Mysterious D (a.k.a. Adrian and Deirdre Roberts) soon asked him to spin as a
guest DJ at their monthly parties in San Francisco, and his tracks were
released on an indie compilation ``The Best Mashups in the World Ever are
from San Francisco,'' which received rave reviews in Remix magazine.

``I haven't made it quite yet,'' says Liechty, 35. ``The pinnacle of a
mash-up DJs career is when you start getting cease-and-desist requests from
the law firms representing the artists.''

Mash-ups have been around for years, but this style of smashing together
music got worldwide attention -- and caused controversy -- in 2004 when DJ
Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, combined Jay-Z's ``Black Album'' with the
Beatles' so-called ``White Album'' to create the ``Grey Album.''

Major label record companies and copyright supporters fought against the
online release, which generated a million downloads on the first day. The
most famous label-approved mash-up album was ``Collision Course'' by Linkin
Park and Jay-Z, which landed in the Billboard Top 10.

DJ Adrian is shaking up the local mash-ups scene by performing mash-ups live
on stage. Two years ago, Adrian and his wife DJ Mysterious D founded Bootie,
the popular monthly mash-ups party at San Francisco's Cherry Bar and Lounge,
where they spin as the resident DJs alongside Live 105's Party Ben (Gill).

Bootie is arguably the center of the local mash-ups community, where on the
second Saturday of the month, an alternative crowd of club-crawlers from

[telecom-cities] AP - "Big Easy May Face Showdown Over Internet"

[Anthony Townsend]

How about a new designation of "infrastructure emergency" for areas that
don't have certain vital services?

---

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301
186_pf.html

Big Easy May Face Showdown Over Internet

By ALAN SAYRE
The Associated Press
Monday, April 3, 2006; 5:20 PM

NEW ORLEANS -- A showdown may be looming over a free wireless Internet
network that New Orleans set up to boost recovery after Hurricane Katrina
pummeled the city.

Calling the network vital to the city's economic comeback, New Orleans
technology chief Greg Meffert is vowing to keep the system running as is,
even if it means breaking a state law that permits its full operation only
during emergencies.

He says he's ready to go to court, if necessary.

"If you can get to the Net, you can do business," Meffert said.

The system, established with $1 million in donated equipment, made its debut
last fall in the wake of the hurricane disaster. It's the first free
wireless Internet network owned and run by a major city.

The system uses hardware mounted on street lights. Its "mesh" technology
passes the wireless signal from pole to pole rather than through Wi-Fi
transmitters plugged directly into a physical network cable. That way,
laptop users can connect even in areas where the wireline phone network has
not been restored.

Touted at first as much for its symbolism of New Orleans' recovery as for
its utility, the system's usefulness now far exceeds early projections,
Meffert said. He estimates that the network gets thousands of users a day.

Hundreds of similar projects in other cities have met with stiff opposition
from phone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative
bills aimed at blocking competition from government agencies.

In New Orleans, the network operates at 512 kilobits per second, much faster
than dial-up connections but slower than high-speed services offered by
private companies.

But a state law, passed two years ago in response to other attempts to
establish government-owned Internet systems, dictates the network can run at
512 kbps only as long as the city remains under a state of emergency _ a
declaration still in place more than seven months after the storm.

Once the state of emergency is lifted _ and no one has said when that might
take place _ state law says the bandwidth must be slowed to 128 kbps.

Meffert says the reduction will make the service virtually useless for
businesses and others trying to re-establish commerce in the city.

Bills to allow New Orleans to keep the network operating full-time at 512
kbps failed during a recent special legislative session. Several similar
bills are pending in the current regular session, but Meffert says city
lobbyists give them little hope of passage because of opposition from the
telecommunications lobby.

"We've been told in no uncertain terms those bills are going to get shot
down," Meffert said.

David Grabert, a spokesman for Cox Communications Inc., a major
telecommunications provider in New Orleans, said the company backs the
state's Fair Competition Act, which would end the city's legal authority to
continue operating the system at full speed after the state of emergency
ends.

"We believe the Fair Competition Act was established to provide safeguards
for private industry," Grabert said. "Efforts to repeal it do raise
concerns."

BellSouth Corp. says it does not comment on pending legislation, but its
regional director for southern Louisiana, Merlin Villar, denies the
company's trying to shut down the city's system.

"The law does not prevent New Orleans or any other local government from
providing Wi-Fi service," Villar said in a statement.

Meffert said many devastated areas of the city likely will not have private
Internet service for years. He said the city is prepared for a showdown _
new law or not. The system will stay up, regardless, though Meffert said he
expects court challenges.

"In the end, it takes a federal judge to issue a restraining order," he
said. "Until that point, if that point ever comes, we'll keep running it.
It's a lifeline to these people."
© 2006 The Associated Press



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TELECOM-CITIES
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[telecom-cities] Pew - How Americans use their cell phones

[Anthony Townsend]

The full memo is at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Cell_phone_study.pdf

How Americans use their cell phones

4/3/2006 | MemoMemo  | Lee Rainie, Scott Keeter

The cell phone has become an integral and, for some, essential
communications tool that has helped owners gain help in emergencies. Fully
74% of the Americans who own mobile phones say they have used their
hand-held device in an emergency and gained valuable help.

Another striking impact of mobile technology is that Americans are using
their cell phones to shift they way they spend their time. Some 41% of cell
phone owners say they fill in free time when they are traveling or waiting
for someone by making phone calls. And 44% say they wait to make most of
their cell calls for the hours when they do not count against their
³anytime² minutes in their basic calling plan.

At the same time, there are new challenges associated with cell phone use.
More than a quarter of cell phone owners (28%) admit they sometimes do not
drive as safely as they should while they use their mobile devices. Among
cell phone users, men (32%) are more likely than women (25%) to admit they
sometimes don¹t drive as safely as they should.

Furthermore, 82% of all Americans and 86% of cell users report being
irritated at least occasionally by loud and annoying cell users who conduct
their calls in public places.

Indeed, nearly one in ten cell phone owners (8%) admit they themselves have
drawn criticism or irritated stares from others when they are using their
cell phones in public.

For some, the cell phone has become so central to their communications needs
that they lose track of the expenses associated with their phones. Some 36%
of cell owners say they have been shocked from time to time at the size of
their monthly bills. 


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