Posted on: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:26:25 -0500 by: G. Snyder
Last summer Mike Q let me borrow a MacBook Pro (one of the new Intel processor based computers) and I fell in love with it. After I gave it back to Mike I decided I’d purchase one for myself and received my new computer last week. I went with a smaller 13.3 inch screen and am very impressed so far.
As a lifelong PC user I thought I’d list some of the first things I did with the Mac and maybe every few weeks give an update of my progress. Beyond what came pre-installed here’s a list of what I currently have installed in the order I installed them:
Firefox Browser
Second Life Application
Skype Client
Audacity for audio recording and editing
Final Cut Express for video editing
Samson CO1U microphone SoftPre applet software
Parallels for Windows Virtual Machine
Flip4Mac that allows WMV files to play in QuickTime
The thing that sold me on the Apple was the Garageband application. GarageBand comes with the Apple iLife suite along with iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, and iWeb. It is really designed for musicians but I find it perfect for the simple podcast recording and editing Mike and I do. I’m especially interested in the ability to create enhanced podcasts for my students. Enhanced podcasts allow you to record audio and then drop in images (Powerpoint slides, pictures, etc) along the timeline.
Students can then watch and listen to the enhanced podcasts using iTunes or, if they have a color screen iPod (nano or video iPod) they can listen and watch there too. You can get more information on Garageband at: http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 15:42:44 -0500 by: G. Snyder
Last week we held our NCTT Winter Conference hosted this year by The Institute for Convergence of Optical and Network Systems (ICONS: http://www.ccsf.edu/Resources/ICONS/about.htm) at the NCTT Regional Partner City College of San Francisco. ICONS is an NSF funded program to develop technician training in advanced fiber optic and converged network technologies, which are at the leading edge of communications technology trends.
Department Chair Carmen Lamha, ICONS Principal Investigator Pierre Thiry, Co-Principal Investigator Tim Ryan, Consultant James Jones and CCSF administrators, faculty and staff were wonderful hosts. We had a large number of attendees and a packed agenda full of technical sessions - I can honestly say our conferences continue to get better and better – this one was incredible!
Thanks to everyone that attended and helped out and participated in any way! Be sure to mark your calendars for our Summer Conference in Massachusetts, July 10-12.
I have become somewhat attached to my Second Life (SL) persona and get on when I can. Like many though I have got to be careful because SL residents have been know to become somewhat addicted!
SL is an MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) similar to World of Warcraft, Everquest, RuneScape and many others your students and children may be playing. Mike and I did an interesting podcast on MMORPGs titled Flat World Strategies: Online Games People Playthat you can find and listen to at www.nctt.org/podcast
According to Wikipedia:
Second Life (abbreviated SL) is an online virtual world provided by Linden Lab which came to international attention in late 2006 and early 2007. Through a client program, subscription-based users interact with other users through avatars, providing an advanced social network service.
While SL is referred to as a game, it, in general, does not have points, scores, winners or losers, levels, an end-strategy, or most of the other characteristics of games. Users, who are often called "Residents" amongst themselves, explore, meet other users, participate in individual and group activities or "events", buy items, virtual property and services from one another. Long-term users learn new skills and mature socially, climbing a virtual hierarchy.
Most major corporations either have a presence on second life or are in the process of setting one up. This past week a couple of interesting announcements came out. The first is a relationship Sears has setup with IBM. Here is a quote from a Mark Wallace blog (http://www.3pointd.com/20070108/ibm-brings-sears-to-second-life-at-ces/):
IBM, which recently set up a business group to explore possibilities in virtual worlds — and earmarked millions of dollars for the effort — is now bringing mega-retailer Sears to the virtual world of Second Life in a project to be announced 8 January, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
In addition Cisco (which has had a space on SL for a while) announced the Cisco Second Home Project. John Chambers, CEO and Chairman of Cisco delivered the keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show yesterday and his speech focused on the “connected home.” If you could not make the CES reception yesterday in Las Vegas, Cisco held a virtual reception on the SL Cisco Island. You can take a look at what Cisco is doing here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Cisco%20Island/87/129/29/?title=The%20Connected%20Home
Technology Review also posted an interesting article titled “A Second Life for Big Business” on January 5, 2007. This article is linked here: http://www.technologyreview.com/BizTech/18016/
This article discusses several business relationships including the SL virtual store IBM has setup for Circuit City and the SL online space Cisco has setup for experts to answer customer questions regarding products and also provide technical support.
Big corporations are jumping on board along with many academic institutions. Take a look if you have not had a chance and say hello if you want – my SL name is Gordo Book!
Posted on: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 10:10:47 -0500 by: G. Snyder
Today is December 30, the last Saturday morning of the year – I was planning on sitting here writing about the $86 billion dollar AT&T/Bell South merger and just had one of those light-bulb moments – it is the end of 2006 and just about the beginning of 2007! I thought it would be good to take a look back at 2006 in the form of a random list – these are the first 25 that come off the top of my head:
YouTube, Skype Out, FTTP, mySpace, Google Docs (formerly Writely) and Spreadsheets, Digg, Delicious, 802.11n, MacBook Pro, Ruby on Rails, Blackjack, RSS, Aggregators, Mashups, MMORPGs, WiMAX, IPTV, FiOS, Chocolate, FTTN, HDTV, Vista, Bootcamp, Web 2.0, AJAX, Ubuntu.....
Are many things missing – of course –I bet we could put our heads together and easily come up with hundreds more. How many of these did we know about 1 year ago? How many even existed a year ago? What will be next in 2007? How many new things will we be able to list 1 year from now?
Many of us have been around long enough to have experienced the PC revolution of the 1980s and the privatization and build-out of the Internet in the 1990s. As we approach ubiquitous broadband with the potential for Gbps connections – what next? What kind of applications can we expect and how far will they be pushed out? As educators how are our classrooms changing? What is the best way to teach our students? How do our students learn? Do they learn differently than you and I? How will people “work” 1 year, 5 years, 10 years from now?
We live with the day to day realities and are all struggling trying to keep up so it is easy not to step back and take a broad look at what is going on. We will look back at this time as a historical period of massive change in the world of education, work and just everything else that is touched by technology (what is not?).
It is all just starting all over again - Happy New Year!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 09:32:38 -0500 by: G. Snyder
On Wednesday, December 20, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted 3-2 to open up cable competition in the pay-TV market. According to the FCC, the increased competition could drive pay-TV rates (which have gone up 90% since 1994) down significantly.
Also, according to the news release on the FCC website:
To eliminate the unreasonable barriers to entry into the cable market, and to encourage investment in broadband facilities, the Commission:
Found that franchising negotiations that extend beyond certain time frames amount to an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise within the meaning of Section 621(a)(1);
Found that requiring an applicant to agree to unreasonable build-out requirements constitutes an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise; Found that, unless certain specified costs, fees, and other compensation required by local franchising authorities are counted toward the statutory five percent cap on franchise fees, demanding them could result in an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise; Found that it would be an unreasonable refusal to award a competitive franchise if the local franchising authority denied an application based on a new entrants refusal to undertake certain unreasonable obligations relating to public, educational, and governmental (PEG) and institutional networks (I-Nets); and Preempted local laws, regulations, and requirements, including local level-playing-field provisions, to the extent they impose greater restrictions on market entry than the rules adopted herein. The Commission concluded that although the record allows it to determine generally what constitutes an “unreasonable refusal to award an additional competitive franchise” at the local level, the Commission does not have sufficient information to make such determinations with respect to franchising decisions made at the state level or in compliance with state statutory directives, such as statewide franchising decisions. As a result, the Order addresses only decisions made by county- or municipal-level franchising authorities.
Here is a translation of the key points with some added detail:
Localities would have 90 days to approve or not approve video franchise licenses unless there are unusual circumstances. Localities would be bared from making unreasonable requests in exchange for a granted license Localities cannot charge annual license fees greater than 5% of total gross revenue
It is not a done deal yet and has the potential to get nasty. According to Marketwatch, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association President Kyle McSlarrow said on Wednesday:
There are some serious questions about whether the commission overstepped its authority.
Also according to Marketwatch:
Verizon and AT&T Inc. stand to benefit most from the decision. They are spending billions of dollars to build fiber networks that can deliver pay-TV service and the fastest Internet connections in the country. The carriers have gotten into the video market to counter the cable industry move into the phone business.
It is almost certain that this rulling will get challenged in court and this will be one of many interesting things to watch in 2007!
Based on some testing supported by Network World and performed by Veriwave and Aruba Networks, the transmission protocol used by 802.11 networks (a, b, g and n) is susceptible to unavoidable packet loss.
In the past it has been thought the protocol was solid with the ability to identify any corrupt packets and request retransmission. The protocol uses a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check for each packet and problems come with something called the Physical Layer Convergence Procedure (PLCP) header which only uses a one bit parity check.
Included in the PLCP is information on the size of the packet and the transmission bit rate. If the header gets scrambled by a bit combination that causes the single parity bit to flip flop back and forth, the parity bit will be set correctly even though the header information is corrupt. As a result, the receiving device may get confused on the packet size and connection speed, ending up either waiting a longer or shorter period of time based on incorrect packet size or connection speed information.
According to Veriwave chief technology officer Tom Alexander as told to Unstrung when interviewed on the error rate:
…..it is extremely small, around .001 percent, but it is never zero. That is not what the protocol says, the loss should be zero.
For many common applications including web surfing, errors like this have little effect on the user experience. However, as more and more of us use wireless WiFi devices for voice communications, these kinds of errors could become more apparent.
According toAruba architect Partha Narasimhan as told to Wi-Fi Planet:
The delays and missing data will be obvious in voice applications...
In addition, VeriWave points out:
…. a problem that occurs during a secure hand-off using Extensible Authentication Protocol(EAP), could provoke a system reset and a 30 second break.
EAP is a universal authentication framework commonly used by Wi-Fi networks. Narasimhan from Aruba goes on to say:
Existing Wi-Fi standards are too entrenched to be changed but changes could and should be made to 802.11n. 802.11n will support a huge variation in speeds, which makes this kind of error more likely, and already has some extra protection built in. It will need to be examined very carefully.
We see lots of draft 802.11n devices being sold with the increased performance over a, b and g attractive. Many are also looking at 802.11n as a way to deliver HDTV bandwidth - imagine 30 second delays during the Super Bowl!
It would be interesting to try and capture these kinds of errors in a lab environment.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:39:03 -0500 by: G. Snyder
Microsoft started testing a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) server yesterday. The VoIP service, called Microsoft Office
Communications Server 2007, is being fast tracked by the company with release projected for the second quarter (April-June) 2007.
Ahead of this product release, Microsoft has announced they will release the product to 2500 businesses for testing.
Microsoft VoIP service users will be able to place calls from within Office applications. Accoring to Reuters: The new voice server will allow users to instantly call anyone from within Office applications by clicking on a person's name
and initiating a call.
This past June (2006) Microsoft announced what they are calling a unified communications approach that, according to
Microsoft: ... will break down today’s silos of e-mail, instant messaging, mobile and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephony, and
audio-, video- and webconferencing.
... through software, Microsoft and its partners will put people at the center of communications through a single identity across
all modes and integrate communication into people’s everyday work processes, including the widely used Microsoft® Office system
and third-party software applications.
Most other companies are in this market in one form or another with companies like Cisco and IBM having a pretty good head
start on Microsoft.
The 2006 National Survey of Information Technology in US Higher Education
Posted on: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:04:29 -0500 by: G. Snyder
The Campus Computing Project (www.campuscomputing.net) has released “The 2006 National Survey of Information Technology in US Higher Education”
Highlights of the report include the fact that wireless networks are now available in half of US college classrooms and IT security incidents on college campuses have decline the past year. Here’s some detail from the report:
-Wireless networks now reach fully half (51.2 percent) of college classrooms compared to just over two-fifths (42.7 percent) in 2005 and a third (31.1 percent) in 2004,
-More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of campuses participating in the annual survey have a strategic plan for deploying wireless as of fall 2006, up from 64.0 percent in 2005 and 53.3 percent in 2004,
-By sector, the proportion of classrooms with wireless access ranges from a third (31.7 percent) in community colleges (up from 26.8 in 2005) to almost two-fifths (58.0 percent) in private research universities (compared to 52.8 percent in 2005 and 47.4 percent in 2004),
-Fully three-fifths (60.5 percent) of colleges and universities increased their campus IT budgets for wireless for the current academic year.
With regards to security and on the good side:
-The percentage of colleges and universities experiencing various security incidents and threats - stolen computers with confidential data, hack attacks on the campus network, and major spyware and virus infestations - declined this past year,
-The percentage reporting identity management events was up slightly (20.5 percent in 2006, vs. 19.7 percent in 2005).
-Similarly, virus and spyware infestations dropped dramatically this past year. One example: almost half (46.1 percent) of public universities reported major computer virus problems in the 2005 survey, compared to a fourth (24.7 percent) in 2006.
On the negative side with regards to security:
-One-tenth (11.3 percent ) of the institutions participating in the 2006 survey report security issues linked to “the exposure of sensitive data on a computer server not managed by central IT services.”
-The problem of exposed data in distributed computing environments was highest in public universities (34.2 percent), followed by private universites (23.5 percent), and public four-year colleges (15.7 percent).
-One-tenth (9.9 percent) of institutions report a security incident this past year linked to social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace.
-Security incidents involving social networking sites ranged from 7.5 percent in community college to 13.7 percent at private research universities.percent in community college to 13.7 percent at private research universities.
In addition:
-IT disaster planning continues to pose a major challenge for many colleges and universities. Just over half (55.7 percent) of institutions report a strategic plan for IT disaster recovery, essentially unchanged from 2004 (55.5 percent) or even 2002 (53.0 percent).
-Over half (53.9 percent, compared to 51.9 percent in 2004) agree “Open Source will play an increasingly important role in our campus IT strategy.” However, less than a third of the survey respondents (28.2 percent, compared to 28.9 percent in 2004) agree that Open Source currently “offers a viable alternative” for key campus or administrative/ERP applications, such as student information systems, campus finance systems, portals, or personnel/human resource software.
Copies of the full 2006 Campus Computing Report will be available on December 10th. And will cost $39 including shipping – a great deal! You can order the report on the Campus Computing website.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:53:40 -0500 by: G. Snyder
For a period of time now many countries including China (I think we’ve all heard the term Great Firewall of China), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran have been blocking certain websites. Censored sites vary from country to country but commonly includes different kinds of news services, human rights groups, etc.
On December 1, 2006 the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto will release psiphon software. Developed with funidng from the Open Society Institute, psiphon providers will be able to install and administer a psiphon server in an open access country, and psiphon users will be able to access and login to these servers from countries that block different types of Web traffic. According to Reuters:
Canadian university researchers have developed software that will let users hop over governments' Internet firewalls, raising the prospect of unfettered Internet access in countries that have long tried to control how residents use the Web.
The download will be free at: http://psiphon.civisec.org along with the user guide. The source code will also be available and may make for some interesting classroom material. [Both the user guide and source code links are currently labeled with “Coming soon….” on the website.]
The user will not have to download and install any software and technically content will still be able to be blocked but it will be extremely difficult using current firewall technology. According to the site FAQ:
With publicly accessible circumvention systems one must assume that the censors can also discover and subsequently block access to these systems. The difference with psiphon - a personal system - is that the web address is only sent to a few, trusted, people. In that way, the censors cannot easily find and block the location of the psiphon server.
In addition:
Future releases of psiphon will contain functionality that allows for optional redundancy. In the same way that psiphon providers and users extend their network based on social relations of trust, psiphon providers in a social network can arrange peering agreements to act as a backup psiphon server for each other's users.
Mike and I discuss social web tools and networks often on our podcasts, often talking about how applications like digg and del.icio.us make us more efficient doing our work. It’s exciting to see an application like psiphon come along that moves these applications to an even higher level.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:31:55 -0500 by: G. Snyder
I’ve blogged and written in the past about the MIT $100 PC project and the broadband divide – it looks like things are now coming closer to reality. ARS Technica has reported that Quanta, a Chinese manufacturing company has put together the first 200 prototype XO-1 units and these prototypes have met most technical and design expectations.
According to Redhat Developer Christopher Blizzard:
The first 200 test systems "are very close to the final hardware builds of the machine. The only differences are that they include an FPGA-based flash controller, which will run at about half the speed of final chip, and that part of the new touchpad functionality is disabled." The touchpad functionality limitations, which affect "the stylus part of the touchpad," are the result of "last minute unresolved electrical problems."
ARS says mass production will start in the second quarter of 2007 with an estimated 5 million to 10 million units produced for distribution in countries that have confirmed orders, including Argentina, Brazil, Libya, and Nigeria. According to ARS the specs are as follows:
The OLPC laptop features a 2.6.19 Linux kernel, and an integrated user environment called Sugar that includes a web browser, a chat system, a simple word processor, and other basic software components. Additional applications will be available for download from an official Internet repository.
The OLPC software is in "freeze" status, which means that ongoing development will primarily consist of critical bug fixes rather than implementation of new features.
Exciting news with great potential, not only for students in foreign countries but also for students here in the United States.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:23:28 -0500 by: G. Snyder
On November 6, 2006, BroadLogic Network Technologies, a San Jose chip manufacturer, announced The World’s First Massively Parallel, Multi-Channel Video Processor, a terapixel-speed video processing chip that will allow cable providers to recover bandwidth that can then be used to deliver more high definition channels, video on demand and high bandwidth data services without major network upgrades.
According to Broadlogic:
The BL80000 TeraPIX chip is capable of decoding dozens of digital video streams and generating a full analog and digital service tier, including an 80-plus analog channel lineup, that any number of cable-ready devices (TVs, DVRs, PCs with tuner cards, etc.) can view, plus up to 160SD or 50HD programs.
The TeraPIX processor powers a new type of Residential Gateway, installed outside or just inside a residence, which allows the network to be all-digital, while subscribers continue to receive the cable-ready analog video, digital video, high speed data and voice services they crave. Conventional set-top boxes output one channel at a time and thus feed only one TV. Cable MSOs can use this technology to take their networks “All Digital,” thus tripling their digital capacity at a time when rising content and competitive requirements demand it.
Traditional cable delivery systems work by allocating 6MHz of analog bandwidth for each channel. Most cable providers offer approximately 80 channels that consume (6 MHz/channel × 80 channels) 480 MHz of bandwidth. Typical cable networks provide only 750 MHz of bandwidth and with 480 MHz used for video, there is not much left for other services.
Let’s think about this a little bit more - one channel consumes 6 MHz of bandwidth but it takes 480 MHz of bandwidth to deliver that single channel to your TV while "wasting" (- 480 MHz - 6 Mhz) 474 MHz of bandwidth. Not very efficient even if you have a few TV’s going in your house watching different channels at the same time.
One way around this problem is to deliver all 80 or so channels in digital format – it works but requires every attached TV in the house to be connected through a set-top box with each box having it’s own remote controller – we have 6 connected TV’s in my home now so 6 boxes plus 6 more controllers - expensive and we have enough time keeping track of a single remote.
It sounds like the Broadlogic chip may be a much more cost effective solution - here's more according to them:
The BroadLogic TeraPIX video processor works by decoding bandwidth-conserving digital video signals delivered by a cable operator, and generating 80-plus high-quality channels of television. Cable operators get their extra bandwidth, and consumers get the channel lineups they’re used to without having to get more set-tops, run more coax, or lose more remotes.
The TeraPIX processor enables solutions that support virtually all existing analog and digital consumer devices. For example, if a subscriber has a DVR set-top from their cable operator, the digital signals are passed through TeraPIX to the DVR.
The price of an individual chip is around $300 when purchased in bulk (1000 or greater numbers) and cable companies are saying this could be a cost effective way to increase network bandwidth.
The technology is moving at such an incredible pace and it is easy to see more bandwidth and more applications and – from an academic perspective – the ability to provide more and more quality IP delivered content to our students at a distance. Very exciting stuff and… what’s next??
Posted on: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 15:59:12 -0500 by: G. Snyder
Yesterday I had an excellent visit with the Borough of Manhattan Community College Video Arts and Technology Program (http://www.bmcc.cuny.edu/speech/VAT/VAT.html ) faculty and administrators. BMCC has an NSF project grant titled "Creatiing Career Pathways for Women and Minorities in Digital Video Technology" – an exciting project with an HDTV focus. We’re looking forward to lots of good results from the VAT group at BMCC.
Instead of driving I took the AMTRAK train down to New York City from Springfield, MA. I had my notebook computer with me and on the way home, as I was doing some work, I decided to let NetStumbler ( http://netstumbler.com/ ) run in the background. NetStumbler is a Windows application that allows you to detect 802.11b, 802.11a and 802.11g Wireless Local Area Network Access Points (WLAN AP’s). In addition to Netstumbler, there is MacStumbler for Macintosh computers, and Kismet for machines running Linux.
Many people use Netstumbler for wardriving that involves driving a car around with a wireless enabled laptop or PDA and logging wireless Wi-Fi networks. According to the Netstumbler website wardriving was first started in the San Francisco area by the Bay Area Wireless Users Group (BAWUG) and is similar to using a scanner for radio. Many wardrivers will use GPS devices to find the exact location of the network found and log it on a website. In fact, if you have a GPS device attached to your computer Netstumbler will automatically log the latitude and longitude settings for future reference. There are several active databases on the web that maintain lists of open hotspots – one of them is maintained and accessed via the Netstumbler site.
In the train I started up Netstumbler on my PC at the New Rochelle, NY stop and just let it run until I got to Springfield, MA with some interesting results. Netstumbler logs, among other things, the access point MAC address, SSID and whether or not the AP is running any kind of encryption. An un-encryped access point is one that is wide open for access. Between New Rochelle and Springfield I logged 1441 access points, many unencryped and wide open for public access. SSID’s were sometimes very descriptive and I found open access points from at least one large insurance company, one law firm and the 36th floor conference room of an unknown company. I also got a kick out of some of the creative SSID names people are using.
Hundreds of the access points still had the Vendor SSID with linksys, NETGEAR and default [note: SSID default is commonly used by no-name routers sold by the big box retailers] popping up on my screen as we rocked along the tracks at 60 mph. Hundreds were setup for open access – I could not actually log in to any because we were moving to fast but I’m convinced I could walk the tracks (something I used to do a lot as a kid since we had tracks behind our house) from New Rochelle to Springfield and maintain free wireless access by piggy-backing on these networks – of course I would need a lot of extra batteries.
I don’t want to get into a debate on what’s legal and what is not – my concern is seeing so many open access points with many likely connected directly into corporate networks. I thought we had this security problem licked but it appears many are still buying these things and just plugging them in.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:51:52 -0500 by: G. Snyder
According to Information
Week, the Programmers Guild, an American non-profit corporation that
advocates against corporate outsourcing, the H1-B visa program and related
topics ( source:
www.wikipedia.com
), believes more Americans would pursue technology careers if those students
got their college educations for free.
Information Week
says:
The Guild will soon
announce a proposal advocating the U.S. government provide
"100% subsidies" of tuition and expenses for American students enrolled in
degree programs in computer science, engineering and other fields where there
are U.S. skill shortages. One source of funding could come from raising fees
that U.S. companies pay to hire foreign H-1B visa holders up to $5,000 per
worker, per year.
U.S.
employers currently pay a one-time government fee of $1,500 per H-1B worker
with fees higher if the employer wants expedited processing or if legal fees
or visa renewals are included.
Kim Berry, president of the Programmers
Guild, is quoted in the article saying:
Even if the government
fees were to be raised annually to $5,000 per H-1B worker, that's still a
bargain. Many of those workers are being underpaid by $10,000 to $20,000, or
more a year.
By increasing H-1B
fees for the roughly 500,000 H-1B workers … are currently in the U.S….the
government could afford to pay tuition costs averaging $20,000 per year for
125,000 American students.
Lynn Shotwell, executive director of the
American Council on International Personnel fired back in an email to
Information Week saying:
Since the inception of
the H-1B program, U.S. employers have paid over $1 billion in H-1B training
and scholarship fees that have funded more than 40,000 scholarships for U.S.
students in math and science, and funded hands-on science programs for 75,000
middle and high school students and 3,000 teachers.
Lynn goes on to say:
Until enough American
students take an interest in studying math, science and engineering, we cannot
afford to close the door to qualified, highly educate foreign workers by
raising H-1B fees even further.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 13:17:55 -0400 by: G. Snyder
Microsoft has made a major commitment to its Windows Mobile 5.0 based Smartphone products. Current products run, among other things, Microsoft Outlook Mobile and Office Mobile software, Voice over IP applications, persistent storage, on-device password enforcement, and remote swipe capabilities.
According to Peter Knook, head of Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices division as quoted by Reuters:
“The number of devices operating on Windows Mobile doubled to 6 million last year…. we want to make 100 percent again this year and to grow further at this rate in coming years."
Major competitors to Microsoft in this market include Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry which also has approximately 6 million users and British software developer Symbian which also owns handset manufacturer Nokia. According to Reuters, RIM's co-Chief Executive Mike Lazaridis said that RIM also intends to keep doubling its number of users each year.
Rumor has it Microsoft is working to integrate it’s Windows Mobile Smartphones to their Xbox gaming platform, allowing users to play Xbox games on their handhelds - an interesting concept and something other developers like RIM and Symbian may have difficulty doing.
Popular Windows Mobile powered devices include the Motorola Q sold by Verizon Wireless, the T-Mobile Dash, the Cingular 2125 and the Motorola i930 sold by Sprint. In addition,thePalm Treo 700w smartphone sold by Verizon Wireless, the Palm Treo 700wx smartphone sold by Sprint and the Palm Treo 750V smartphone sold by European provider Vodafone all run Windows Mobile.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Oct 2006 18:36:25 -0400 by: G. Snyder
Lately I’ve become pretty attached to Writely, the online word processor recently purchased by Google. It’s what I’m using now to type this blog and collaborate with colleagues on presentations and other kinds of content. Recently Mike Qaissaunee (in New Jersey), VinceDiNoto (in Kentucky) and I (in Massachusetts) collaborated on a session description for an upcoming NSF conference. We used Writely to share and edit the session proposal and it was extremely effective. Passing around documents by email can get confusing for me – especially when there are more than two people involved. I have a hard time keeping track of which version is the latest and have to be very careful I’m always working on th latest cut. With Writely we all worked on the same document – in fact we could all be accessing and editing the same document at the same time.
Combine Writely with other Google products like Google Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Gmail and you have a pretty formidable combination. The only disadvantage at this time is you have to be online to use. Broadband connections are not required but, as far as most are concerned necessary for a favorable user experience.
What does this mean? Let’s use a Writely example: Say you are in an airport with WiFi access and want to do some work. You have documents on Writely and can sit there in the terminal with your broadband connection and edit away. What happens when you get on the plane? No network access means no Writely. Of course you can still do your work if, while connected to the network, you’ve saved the documents locally on your hard drive and have a word processor installed.
Well, being connected will soon not be necessary to use online products like these. In early 2007 Firefox, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple will be releasing next generation web browsers that can be used offline. This means users will be able to take these applications that require a broadband connection offline. So with the airport scenario you would simply save your Writely content local using your web browser. When you get on the plane and get to 10,000 feet, you start your laptop, launch your browser and continue using Writely without a network connection.
Think about it – device (of course you’ll be able to access using your smartphone), processor, hard drive, platform, etc independent with no word processor or spreadsheet or calendar or email software installed on your computer. And it's all free!
Posted on: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 20:20:06 -0400 by: G. snyder
Jajah, started by Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes in 2004, is offering an interesting service that may challenge Skype and other similar products. Jajah provides a paid service that allows calls to be routed landline/cell to landline/cell in many parts of the world without long distance fees. Here’s how it works: Let’s say I’m a Jajah customer and I want to call my brother who is living in London. I log into my Jajah account at jajah.com, enter my brother’s landline or cell number and my landline or cell number. Jajah makes the connection and rings my phone and then my brothers phone over connections that are local to each of us.
As you’ve probably figured out Jajah works by making only the last connection to each party over traditional phone lines, the middle connection is done over the Internet. The actual call does not have to get through things like corporate firewalls – a potential advantage over products like Skype, even though Skype has done an extremely good job figuring how to route past firewalls.
There are other advantages (taken from www.jajah.com ):
-Users do not have to download or install any software.
-Users do not need a headset
-Users don't need a broadband connection
-Users are using your existing phone (landline or mobile) and so is the person you are calling
-Users are not stuck to your computer
-Users can call others for free - no matter if they are online or not
In addition we’re starting to see Jajah plug-ins and extensions for various products including ( from www.wikipedia.com ):
-An Outlook Plugin that allows users to click-to-call phone numbers in their Outlook address book.
-A Firefox Extension that creates links to every phone number on a website and can be clicked directly to initiate a call. A pop-up window opens, and you can establish the call with Jajah. You can also enter a number in the toolbar to establish a call.
-A Mac OS X Address Book Plugin: Allwos to right click (ctrl+click) a number in your Mac address book to open a Jajah window.
-A Plaxo Outlook Toolbar that allows click-to-call phone numbers in your Outlook address book and offers all the Plaxo features.
The company recently started offering free phone-to-phone calls between Jajah members in North and South America. Rates on calls to between other parts of the world are very low – see: http://www.jajah.com/info/rates/
Rumor has it the company will soon be releasing a mobile phone version of Jajah that will allow users to bypass computer use completely. Youtube has a short two minute video Jajah posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkU-sq43atU
Posted on: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:16:33 -0400 by: Guest Blogger: Mike Qaissaunee
Death by Powerpoint
Many people have very strong - mostly negative - opinions about Powerpoint. The phrase "death by Powerpoint" has been used (we say over-used) to describe the painful experience of sitting through a bad Powerpoint presentation. Let's begin with some thoughts from Edward R. Tufte - professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale. In a September 2003 Wired Magazine article "PowerPoint is Evil" Tufte illustrates his thesis with a really creative metaphor:
Imagine a widely used and expensive prescription drug that promised to make us beautiful but didn't. Instead the drug had frequent, serious side effects: It induced stupidity, turned everyone into bores, wasted time, and degraded the quality and credibility of communication. These side effects would rightly lead to a worldwide product recall.
Slideware may help speakers outline their talks, but convenience for the speaker can be punishing to both content and audience. The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.
One can sum up the sentiment by borrowing and adapting a phrase from Security Consultant and blogger Steve Riley - Powerpoint is "... the place where knowledge goes to die."
While we don't disagree with Tufte and other critics that the use of Powerpoint is part of an ever-present misconception that technology fixes things or makes things better, we're not here to pile on - instead we'd like to offer some ideas to make Powerpoint more effective in your classroom. While technology can and has provided some great benefits to society, it's not a panacea - you can't just throw Powerpoint into the classroom and turn a poor lecturer into a good lecturer or a good lecturer into a great lecturer. Tufte gets it right when he says:
Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.
There's no better way to learn how to do something than by watching and learning from people who are great at what they do, so we'd like to share with you today some interesting and innovative PowerPoint presentations that hopefully will inspire you to look at Powerpoint and technology in new and different ways. The first is the 2005 Open Source Convention keynote Identity 2.0 from Sxip Identity founder and CEO Dick Hardt. What's interesting and unique about this presentation is the style. In a presentation that lasts only 15 minutes, Hardt uses hundreds of slides - many with just a single word or image. At the end of the presentation, Hardt credits Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Center for Internet and Society, for inspiration for the style. That said, here is example number two - Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture presentation from the 2002 Open Source Convention. What I think we can learn from Lessig (considered master of the simple slide show) and Hardt is to break free from the constraints of Powerpoint - the titles and the bullet lists and the charts.
The final example is Guy Kawasaki'sArt of the Start speech at TiECon 2006 - the annual meeting of The Indus Entrepreneur organization. Kawasaki gives a great presentation about innovation and business evangelism, speaking plainly and peppering the presentation with humor. Some of the key points Kawasaki makes are:
abandon the traditional business paradigm of Mission Statements in favor of shorter more meaningful 3-4 word Mantras; and
adopt the 10/20/30 rule for presentations - no more than 10 content slides (Kawasaki favors top ten lists); no longer than 20 minutes (his presentation is nearly 40-minutes); and use nothing smaller than 30 point font.
The Mission versus Mantra discussion is great - it really parallels the Lessig/Hardt approach of simple is better. The 10/20/30 rule is interesting as well. While it may not work or be right for everyone, it does accomplish a few things - the 10 gets you and your audience to focus on 10 key points you'd like to get across; the 20 keeps the presentation short and digestible; and the 30 ensures that you HAVE to know what you're talking about - you can't read it off the slide, because it's not there.
We encourage you to watch and re-watch these videos and to try out some of what you see. Take one of your lectures and try the 10/20/30 rule or "simplify" it like Lesig and Hardt or come up with your own unique style. The key is to focus on the content and the learning and not get seduced by the technology, the animations, or the bullet lists. So, open up your mind, set aside your preconceptions; don't view Powerpoint as a crutch or as a substitute for your lecture, but instead as a spark that can ignite and excite an audience. And lastly, don't ignore Tufte's most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 08:45:51 -0400 by: G. Snyder
The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been holding auctions since 1994 for electromagnetic spectrum licenses. These auctions are open to any eligible company or individual that submits an application and upfront payment, and is found to be a qualified bidder by the Commission. The auctions are conducted electronically and are accessible over the Internet. This means anyone with access to a computer with a web browser can follow the progress of an auction and view the results of each round.
There has recently been considerable activity in the wireless services area with T-Mobile USA, in the last 136 rounds, provisionally spending $4.2 billion and winning 119 licenses in major metropolitan markets. T-Mobile is listed as the number. 4 U.S. wireless carrier and owned by Deutsche Telekom AG. Overall the auction has grossed around $13.9 billion which is on target with the $8 billion to $15 billion analysts had projected.
T-Mobile’s spending spree was not unexpected with the company lagging behind the other top 3 wireless carriers in the United States (Verizon, Cingular and Sprint/NEXTEL).
Posted on: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:17:15 -0400 by: G. Snyder
Just like in the early 1980's Clearwire's Craig O. McCaw has been buying up licensed radio spectrum. You may not have heard of Craig but in the early 80's he recognized local cell permits being sold by the the FCC were greatly undervalued and he started bidding cellular phone licenses. He did his buying under the radar screen of the telcos and, by the time they recognized what he was doing it was basically too late – Craig had already purchased and owned licenses in most of the major markets.
Of course he had the money - in 1986 Craig and his brothers sold a cable television business their father had left them for $755 million and concentrated on building a national cellular phone network. The story continues - MCI Communications sold its cellular and paging operations to Craig in 1986 for $122 million and their company went public with the brothers holding around 40% of the company. His last big acquisition in the cell market was the $3.5 billion deal for LIN Broadcasting where he outbid Bell South. With the LIN acquisition Craig and his brothers had almost complete control of the 1989 U. S. cell market.
McCaw brothers sold the company to AT&T in 1994 for $11.5 billion and a lot of people figured they would just ride off into the sunset – not the case!
Fast forward to today - Clearwire, under Craig's direction, has quitely purchased enough licensed radio spectrumto build a national WiMAX network. Craig has also attracted some major investors with Motorola and Intel giving him close to $900 million in July. Rumor has it that, with Clearwire's potential network, within 3 years the company will be able to offer nationwide WiMAX service for around $25 per month which is significantly less that people are currently paying for other providers nationwide lower bandwidth data services.
Clearwire is not without competition. According to WiMAXTrends.com:
On August 8 Sprint Nextel President and CEO Gary Forsee announced that Sprint will adopt WiMAX as it technology choice for its next generation "4G" network. Mr. Forsee announced that its current EV-DO network will complement a mobile WiMAX network. The mobile WiMAX network will be utilized with a full range of WiMAX-embedded devices.
The products are coming and the providers are committed to build the network. This makes tme think seriously about the Muni WiFi initiatives we are seeing springing up in most U.S. cities. Will they survive? If I'm a business person on the road do I take my chances on Muni WiFi or do I just pay Clearwire $25 per month for guranteed access?
References:
A Wake Up Call from Craig McCaw, Business Week Magazine, July 24, 2006
Google, Gdrive, and Platypus: infinite storage, bandwidth and CPU power
Posted on: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:41:23 -0400 by: M. Qaissaunee - Guest Blogger
Google, Gdrive, and Platypus: infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power
Since the launch of Gmail and the (at the time) unheard of storage space of 2 gigabytes, a number of developers have created tools to allow users to use their Gmail accounts for file storage. Examples include the GMail Drive shell extension, an add-on for the Firefox browser - Gmail Space, and even an equivalent for Mac OS X. Each of these add-ons/applications allows users to seamlessly email files to their Gmail accounts, while appearing to the native OS as another drive. Likewise, there's been a lot of buzz about Google's launch of Google Spreadsheets , and their acquistion and integration of Upstartle and their online wordprocessor Writely.
Now there's an increasing amount of chatter about something called GDrive or GDS or Lighthouse or even Platypus. Much of the speculation is that this new product/project will bring together Google Spreadsheet, Writely and infinite online storage. Interestingly, although this is all still speculation, many of the clues come directly fom Google. Consider, for instance, Greg Linden's blog. Via Paul Kedrosky (Google ppt) Greg links to 94-slide powerpoint presentation from Google's March 2nd Analyst Day. The presentation itself it interesting to look at, but the fodder for this discussion comes from the presenter notes.
Here are some highlights:
Slide 31 - a "no constraints" product development philosophy - initially ignore "CPU power, storage, bandwidth, and monetization."
Slide 20 - "get all the worlds information, not just some."
And the most compelling - Slide 19
online "experience should really be instantaneous"
"house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)"
"the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache"
"transparent personalization" - use user "data to transparently optimize the user's experience ... implicitly."
Here are the presenter notes for slide 19 of the presentation:
Purpose of this slide: In a world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power, here's what we could do with consumer products…
Theme 1: Speed Seems simple, but should not be overlooked because impact is huge. Users don't realize how slow things are until they get something faster. Users assume it takes time for a webpage to load, but the experience should really be instantaneous. Gmail started to do this for webmail, but that's just a small first step. Infinite bandwidth will make this a reality for all applications.
Theme 2: Store 100% of User Data With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value to the user. As we move toward the "Store 100%" reality, the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache. An important implication of this theme is that we can make your online copy more secure than it would be on your own machine. Another important implication of this theme is that storing 100% of a user's data makes each piece of data more valuable because it can be access across applications. For example: a user's Orkut profile has more value when it's accessible from Gmail (as addressbook), Lighthouse (as access list), etc.
Theme 3: Transparent Personalization The more data, access, and processing Google can handle for the user, the greater our ability to use that data to transparently optimize the user's experience. Google Desktop w/ RSS Feeds is a good first example: the user should not have to tell us which RSS feeds they want to subscribe to. We should be able to determine this implicitly.
Other potential examples: User should not have to specify the "From" address in Google Maps; user should not have to specify which currency they want to see Froogle prices in; user should not have to manually enter their buddy list into Google Talk.
What does Linden make of all this?
These notes clearly state efforts have been put towards "infinite storage" in terms of GDrive.
The GDrive service will provide anyone (who trusts Google with their data) a universally accessible network share that spans across computers, operating systems and even devices. Users will no longer require third party applications to emulate this behaviour by abusing Gmail storage.
In a Windows environment, most users know how to use the typical C: in "My Computer". Network drives work exactly the same but are given a different letter and the files within are not stored on the computer. If my suspicions are correct and GDrive is simply a network share, most applications could take advantage of this service without modification.
More evidence comes from Garett Rogers, who references a post by Corsin Camichel showing a page hosted on Google's server. The screenshot (shown below) clearly indicates that GDrive and Platypus are one and the same. The image also seems to indicate that there is (or will be) client software for Windows, Mac and Linux.
The image is a bit fuzzy, so here is the text of the bullets:
Backup. If you lose your computer, grab a new one and reinstall Platypus. Your files will be on your new machine in minutes.
Sync. Keep all your machines synchronized, even if they run different operating systems.
VPN-less acecss. Not at a Google computer? View your files on the web at http://troutboard.com/p
Collaborate. Create shared spaces to which multiple Googlers can write
Disconnected access. On the plane? VPN broken? All your files are still accessible.
Lastly, Garett Rogers , through some online detective work has found the domain names gbrowser.com and gdrive.com registered to a company in Mountain View, California.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:07:13 -0400 by: G. Snyder
Vonage has recently come out with what the company is calling a “V-Phone”. This V-Phone is a USB thumb/jump/portable/etc drive that comes installed and configured with Vonage Talk software (including a Vonage phone number), an earpiece, microphone and 250 MB of useable storage for user files.
Using the V-Phone you can plug in to any USB capable broadband connected computer, connect your microhone/headset and start making and receiving calls. The current version only works with Windows based PC’s – an Apple version is not available.
The current device sells for $39.95 and comes with a few different monthly service plan options:
- for $14.95 per month users get 500 minutes of local and long distance calling anywhere in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. The charge is 3.9 cents per minute after the first 500 monthly minutes.
- For $24.99 per month users get unlimited local and long distance calling anywhere in the US, Canada and Puerto Rico along with free calls to select European countries. A similar business plan lists for $34.99 per month.
911 service is always a concern when using broadband connected services. Vonage’s solution requires subscribers to register their location. According to the Vonage website:
You must register with Vonage the physical location where you will utilize Vonage phone service (Service) for each phone line. Also note that if you move your device to another location, you must register your new location – it's easy – just log into the features section of your web account and follow the instructions. If you do not register your new location, any 911 call you make may be sent to an emergency center near your old location. You will register your initial location of use when you subscribe to the Service. This process can take several hours, and you will receive a confirmation email once 911 Dialing has been activated for your initial location or for a newly registered location. Regardless of what address you register for a WiFi or SoftPhone, emergency calls you make from these devices will be routed to the Vonage national emergency response center.
Remember that our 911 Dialing service will not function in the event of a broadband or power outage or if your broadband, ISP or Vonage phone service is terminated.
The discussion forum traffic on this device has been interesting to watch and is linked below.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:36:14 -0400 by: G. Snyder
Yesterday Charlie Paglee claimed on the VoIPWiki Blog that a Chinese business has reverse engineered Skype's communications protocol. Rumor has it the un-named Chinese company will produce a Skype compatible soft phone and will go public with it by the end of this month.
Most of us have a basic understanding of Skype and many of us are using it now to make calls over broadband connections. It's actually quite complex. According to one of the original Skype architects Niklas Zennstrom quoted at The Register:
… each Skype client is always connected to a SuperNode (any Skype client can become a SuperNode, the SuperNode is acting as a hub). SuperNodes are always on routable open IP addresses. When a call is set up the established TCP connection with the SuperNode is used to signal that a call is coming. Dependent on the firewall status of the client the data stream is set up either as UDP (if firewall allows) or in worse case as outgoing TCP which is almost always allowed. If both clients are only allowed to do outgoing TCP, calls are routed through another peer.
According to Paglee, the Chinese Skype compatible softphone will not support this SuperNode technology. Big deal right? Well, it is (!) because in effect, by using Skype, you are potentially allowing your computer to be "hijacked" (Paglee's word, not mine). Many potential and current Skype users are concerned about Skype using their computers as relay stations and this rumored product would, in effect, eliminate that relay function.
A Skype compatible application would definitely convert many current Skype users and attract new users if it does not install and run the SuperNode application. If the rumor is true it will be interesting to see whether the company publishes the Skype protocols because, if they do, it would allow other developers to create similar applications.
Let's think about this a little bit – Skype is very popular – especially with international users. The company has been aggressively marketing and adding customers, currently offering free SkypeOut (Broadband Skype to landline and cell numbers) to North American users. Netgear is shipping thier first Skype WiFi phone tomorrow (July 15, 2006) with these being potential cell phone killers for users in areas with public WiFi access. What will happen if current Skype users decide to stop using the Skype product that installs and uses SuperNode technology? The Skype network could rapidly (voice/call quality and connectivity) collapse if users opt out of the Skype product and move to the Skype compatible product.
eBay has been building Skype subscribers (eBay purchased Skype last year for $2.6B) with many predicting the company has plans to eventually start advertising. There's another future reason (if eBay decides to start advertising on Skype) to move to the Skype-compatible product – no advertisements!
