patrickWeb

Public Policy

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Vision

I felt compelled to reflect back on a posting I wrote in March 2006 about trading on Wall Street. With the wild swings in the market experienced last week, one of the key questions seems clearly to be how long does it take for regulatory changes to get in sync with market and technological changes? The trading irregularities that occurred are viewed with alarm by many. Should we be shocked that such a think could have happened? I don't think so. Some will say that highly automated trading should not be allowed. In fact legislation was lintroduced to ban it. Maybe each trade should be artificially restricted to take X minutes or seconds or no trade can exceed X shares in Y minutes? Maybe trades should be approved by the government? Maybe trades should be on paper? Reminds me of the Luddites trying to destroy mechanized looms and many in the know expressing considerable resistance toward Johann Gutenberg's press.

Maybe what we need is more "Net Attitude". What we are being confronted with is not a technical problem and it is not a regulatory problem. It is a vision problem. Leaders not seeing and embracing technology. Advances in technology can not be stopped -- they have to be embraced, understood, and planned for. I would not expect leaders in the congress or regulatory bodies to be techno geeks but I would expect them to be tech aware and to bring in the right experts to help them see a vision of what is ahead and to thereby enable the leaders to lead in a more progressive fashion and not hide behind political statements that may appeal to various niches. Unfortunately, we are seeing time after time that leaders in key places do not seem to have a clue as to what is happening or is possible in the technological world.

The No Fly List is an even more sobering and dramatic example. The TSA told the airlines that when a high priority name is added to the list the airlines have to look at the list within 24 hours. Twenty-four hours? After the recent terrorist act they reduced it to two hours. Two hours? Amazon can process your order or banks can move your money in fractions of a second but a potentially life-threatening addition to an important list needs two hours to be communicated? Have they heard of email or text messages or tweets? This lack of awareness and technical thinking combined with their staffs leaking to the press an analysis of what the terrorist did wrong and thereby providing a checklist for how to do better next time does not make one comfortable about our security in the future.

One more example makes the point. A senior political leader being interviewed this morning was asked the following. When a person buys a ticket a one way ticket to Pakistan a few hours before the flight and pays for it with cash should that send up a red flag? The politican said "I don't know if that can be done". I am sure he doesn't know what a tweet is either.

March 9, 2006

While driving to Reading, Pennsylvania, earlier this week to visit Maestro Sidney Rothstein for a conducting lesson (more on Beethoven's Prometheus Overture later), I tuned in to Bloomberg radio. The reporter was interviewing John Thain, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange (NYX), which had just started its first day as a public company. The interviewer asked about the possibility of the Exchange becoming "all electronic" to which Mr. Thain responded that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that the exchange is a very people oriented process, that people are required to balance the many buy and sell orders received and that the human element is essential and "that's not going to change".

Mr. Thain's words immediately rang a bell with me. It sounded like ten years ago when the CEO's of banks and brokerage firms (and Microsoft) were saying that the Internet was interesting but that it would never be used for banking or securities trades. Over the ensuing years financial services companies ran print advertising campaigns saying how important brokers were and how they provide advice from people you can trust. After the denial phase was over the firms couldn't get into online trading fast enough and now Barron's does in depth analysis of which securities firms have the best web-based trading and investment advice capabilities.

Computing power and networking speeds are accelerating rapidly beyond the already amazing capabilities of today. Computational biology has made it possible to decode the human genome years ahead of the projected time. Human proteins are being designed that may provide cures for cancer. A supercomputer defeated the world's greatest chess player. Two robots are driving around the surface of Mars under computer control from Earth. But buy and sell orders for securities can not be modeled, optimized, and matched by computers? Is it possible that the financial services leaders are once again benighted about what is in front of them? Could it be that the jeopardy of profit margins and bonuses could blind them from seeing what is ahead?

Go Figure, Internet Technology, Net Attitude, People, Public Policy May 9, 2010 05:16 PM

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Electrical Energy

The Lehigh Unniversity Engineering Advisory Board meets a few times per year and at least one of the meetings focuses on a strategic issue opportunity. The meeting held earlier this month was held in Washington, D.C. and focused on U.S. electrical energy generation,
transmission, distribution, storage, and consumption. One of the EAB members is Judy Marks who is an executive at Lockheed Martin and she was kind enough to have her company host our meeting. On arrival night we were fortunate to hear a short lecture on the future of fighter jet aircraft at the Lockheed Fighter Jet Demonstration Center in Arlington. Even better was that each of us got to spend some time in F-22 and F-35 flight simulators.

The Lockheed Martin (with partner Boeing) F-22 Raptor is a single seat, twin-engine fifth-generation fighter aircraft that uses stealth technology. The simulator was dumbed down and many of the questions that EAB members asked of the fighter pilot who assisted us were appropriately sprinkled with "unclassified" answers. Even the unclassified specifications were mind-numbing. As a pilot I know a little bit about aviation but not much about military jets. The flying experience in the simulators was incredible. Pull back the stick and the F-22 goes up -- straight up if you tell it to. At a cost of $143 million each it should be spectacular!

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is also a fifth-generation, single-seat, single-engine stealth fighter but additionally is "multi-role" -- it can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air defense missions. I flew in the simulator for the short take off and vertical-landing variant of the plane. In addition to the amazing flying capabilities it can land on an aircraft carrier vertically. As I was bringing it down, it adjusted itself to land right next to another F-35 that was on the carrier deck. The F-35 is intended to become a Joint Strike Fighter and deployed by numerous countries around the world. At a mere $83 million each it is much more affordable than the F-22!

The meeting turned serious first thing in the morning -- a deep dive by the Engineering Advisory Board along with leading experts from government, industry, and Lehigh faculty researchers in energy, advanced materials, and systems research. The goals were to assess future needs in integrated energy systems, evaluate technical and intellectual niches at Lehigh relevant to these needs, and envision a bold developmental roadmap toward a world-class energy systems research center. Lehigh has a lot of depth in key areas that are fundamental to energy systems and the brainstorming at this meeting was designed to trigger ideas to leverage the available skills. When I was an electrical engineering student 40+ years ago there were two curricula options -- power systems or electronics. The latter had a bit more glamour for many. Energy (power) systems may take the baton.

It almost goes without saying how important and massive the global energy challenge is. Clearly it warrants a full range of energy systems research activities for years to come, incorporating technologies ranging from a smart electrical grid to advanced energy generation and storage; from sensing, networking and power electronics, to integrated communication and decision support architectures and technologies that support a smarter, more efficient, more resilient, and better integrated energy system. The "smart" part of the grid has to go from top to bottom -- including at the consumer level where smart meters and smart appliances will enable consumers to know what energy they are using and to make informed decisions on when it is best to utilize energy.

Implementing the "smart grid" is easier said than done. There are many different standards and protocols in use by utilities across the country -- some would say a hodgepodge. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet. My grandchildren were born after the Internet was well established but those of us old enough to remember know how many competing networks there were in the early 1990's -- SNA from IBM, AppleLink from Apple, DecLink from Digital and dozens of others. The Internet Architecture Board of the Internet Engineering Task Force pulled together a set of standards that superseded all other networks and became *the* network. A similar effort is now underway under coordination of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It was nostalgic to read and even if you only read the table of contents you will get an appreciation of the potential. See the NIST Framework and Roadmap for smart Grid Interoperability Standards. It is standards that make the Internet global and efficient. Likewise the smart grid standards will make it possible to predict and prevent power outages and ensure efficient transmission, distribution, storage, and utilization of energy no matter how it was produced. The need for the smart grid is great and the clock is ticking. Lehigh is gearing up to provide critical research and graduates to help move things forward.

Aviation, Energy, Internet Technology, People, Public Policy, Travels March 17, 2010 02:15 PM

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Solar

Alternative energy -- sources that have no undesired consequences unlike fossil fuels or nuclear energy -- are renewable and are often thought of as "free". There are billions of dollars being spent on alternative energy but there clearly are benefits compared to conventional energy sources. The alternative sources include biomass, wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric the tides and other things. There is controversy over how much of the world's total energy needs can be met by the collective output of alternative energy sources but I had thought there was general agreement that even if it is 10% or even less that it was a good thing. I had written a story about wind turbines and much to my surprise there was a lot of pushback about whether it was a good thing at all.

It is reasonable to assume that all the various alternatives have their pluses and minuses, but of them all, it seems to me that solar is the ultimate solution. It may take a long time but solar has the potential to be the dominant -- maybe the only -- source of energy in the long run for the entire world. IBM says that energy saving solar technology will be built into asphalt, paint and windows. There could be huge savings by having solar heat embedded in our sidewalks, driveways, siding, paint, rooftops, and windows. The cost of solar is going to drop with the creation of "thin-film" solar cells that can be 100 times thinner than today's materials. The new material can be "printed" and arranged on a flexible backing, suitable for not only the tops but also the sides of buildings.

I had a catch-up call last week with my friend James Marlow -- founder of a solar startup based in Atlanta called Radiance Energies where he is focusing on solar thermal hot water systems for commercial customers. James sees great potential for solar energy. "Solar is not the only solution for our energy challenges but it is a serious part of the solution", he says. We compared notes on the government role in solar and agreed that there is a hodgepodge at the state level. In Connecticut there is an incentive to install solar but the assistance has an income cutoff level. People who could afford significant systems are not eligible for the assistance. People who are eligible often still can't afford the systems. Go figure.

Energy, Home Automation, On Demand, Public Policy January 19, 2010 10:00 AM

Thursday, January 14, 2010

OCLC - Part 2

I continue to learn a lot about libraries from my board service at OCLC. No grass is growing under their feet at OCLC as they continue to look for new ways to connect the world's libraries. Mobile devices are fast becoming the medium of choice for access to information for more and more of us. OCLC has been aggressive on this front and has just partnered with RedLaser to introduce an innovative iPhone app which puts information about books from thousands of libraries at your fingertips.

RedLaser, developed by Occipital, of Boulder, Colorado, turns the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner. Just aim the camera at the barcode on a book and the app captures the information. You then tap on it and the app uses a connection to OCLC's WorldCat to deliver localized U.S. library results based on the your geolocation and it provides a list of libraries that have the book plus the library locations, contacts and map information. There is a very good interview Mike Teets of OCLC and a demo here.

OCLC has opened up the interfaces to WorldCat not only for RedLaser but to anyone interested in creating non-commercial mash-ups or mobile apps that utilize library data. The WorldCat iPhone app can also be used separately. A version of the WorldCat Mobile app also works on Android phones, including the Motorola Droid and the new Google Nexus One.

I have to admit that I had never heard of WorldCat until I got involved at OCLC. Quite impressive that it is the world's largest database of bibliographic information. Institutions around the world share the records, using them to create local catalogs, arrange interlibrary loans and conduct reference work. There are now more than 165 million records in WorldCat spanning five millennia of recorded knowledge. Like the knowledge it describes, WorldCat grows steadily. Every second, OCLC and its member libraries add seven records to WorldCat.

OCLC Homepage

WorldCat

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy January 14, 2010 03:39 PM

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Analytics

In the old days, companies recorded their sales on punched cards and then sorted the cards to analyze sales by customer number, date, state, and department. It was rudimentary but amazing compared to what could be done by sorting paper invoices. Today, the more advanced companies utilize "analytics" to dig deep into the voluminous data that they capture about each sale and the relationship they have with their customers. If you buy a bag of Frito Lay chips at a local 7 Eleven store, the home office in Dallas knows about the chips purchase instantly -- and that is the trivial case.

Savvy retailers, using analytics, know when an online buyer makes a purchase and if they have been a customer for more than 24 months and if they have spent more than $1,000 year-to-date and their cumulative purchase returns have been less than $100 and the returns have been 85% due to an ordering error and they tend to buy premium brands and they use Prime shipping and they live in 12345 zip code and their likely income is more than $xx,xxx and they have written more than X product reviews, and they recently made an email inquiry about a certain product feature. The analytics results in them getting on a special list of customers who get special attention. In the case of a financial services company using analytics, they look at the number of visits you make to the web site and how many times you have a complaint about something and what the bottom line profitability of your relationship with them has been over the past xx months and that customer may end up on a list of "high maintenance" customers and not be eligible for certain offerings.

Some customers would prefer that such granularity of data not be available but most are delighted with the enhanced and personalized service that analytics makes possible.

I don't normally write much about political or geopolitical issues. Like all of us, I do have opinions but it has been my practice to stick to technology, music, Mozart, and motorcycles in the blog. However, I can not resist saying something about the attempted aviation attack of a few days ago. Should the government use analytics? It seems so basic. If an airline passenger who is on a watch list purchases a $2,800 one-way ticket with cash, is making an international flight and has no checked baggage, requests a window seat above the main fuel tank, and has been reported by a creditable source to an embassy as a possible radical, should that passenger show up on someones radar screen as a person deserving of special attention?

From an information technology perspective this would be a trivial utilization of analytics. Proposals to utilize analytics have been made in the past. Each time, the political process has stopped the proposal. Civil liberty concerns have prevailed. If the bomber had been successful would things have changed? History would say no. Businesses are getting smarter and smarter. Our government is spending more and more money. Is it getting smarter?

Other public policy related stories on patrickWeb

IBM, Public Policy December 29, 2009 10:00 AM

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Supernova 2009

Ppeople at a conference Commercial Air travel is not a barrel of fun these days but leaving home at 4:30 in the morning enabled me to get an early flight and a smooth trip to San Francisco. The return trip two days later was a different story. Airlines can't control the weather and occasional maintenance issues are to be expected, but the frustrating part is the lack of good communications on the ground at the airports and the lack of integrated systems resulting in getting different information -- kiosk, overhead displays, ticket counter, at the gate, airline lounges -- for the same flight. The maintenance issue was fixed quickly but the "paperwork" to get approval for takeoff required a couple of hours. Most of us have similar stories -- there are a number of my airline stories here in the blog.

This was the eighth year for the Supernova conference -- run by Kevin Werbach who is a leading expert on the business, policy, and social implications of emerging Internet and communications technologies. Kevin has a good track record of anticipating key trends along the path to the Network Age. Supernova attracts CEOs, bloggers, entrepreneurs, academics, practitioners, visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders. Like all conferences, the best part is catching up with friends and colleagues and comparing points of view.

There are a couple of unique things about Supernova. It is the only conference that connects with one of the world's foremost business schools -- the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The other unique feature is how "connected" the attendees can become with the speakers and each other. Supernova offers a live video stream, a twitter feed, and live blogging to enable attendees and remote participants from all over the world -- there were 200+ people from numerous countries in San Francisco this year -- to all jump into the conversation.

It is very difficult to summarize what I learned at Supernova. Every year it is mind expanding. I feel fortunate to be there and participate in the dialogue and stay somewhat on the edge of what is evolving. The mobile Internet continues to gain momentum -- seemed that everyone there had an iPhone. Last year I reported that social computing was mushrooming. Not sure what word describes the current status -- maybe all-consuming. There are serious discussions going on in the development community about how (not whether) to standardize identity, authorization, and applications across the various social networks in some sensible way. Privacy has always been an issue but as storage cost approaches zero, everything we say or do will be saved. Twitter is the tip of the iceberg. The telecommunications operators continue to consolidate and continue to offer poor customer service and a lack of choice.

Kevin kicked things off at the Mission Bay Conference Center (UCSF Campus) with his view of the "changing world". The afternoon panels focused on how pervasive connectivity is altering everything from our social interactions to our cities and how the infrastructure of the Internet is quietly being transformed. The rise of cloud computing and broadband applications are shifting the landscape for both network operators and service providers. Anil Dash talked about how networking is beginning to make government more efficient and collaborative. Peter Gruber talked about the turmoil in the motion picture industry where it is becoming harder to predict what consumers will want. Avatar -- to be released in a couple of weeks -- cost $350 million to produce while Paranormal Activity is said to have cost $11,000. Which one will make more money? Chris Anderson, of Wired, talked about how a clever designer can use three-D software at home to design a physical object and then "manufacture" it on a $750 three-D printer in the basement.

Day two was at the Wharton San Francisco Campus. During the Opening Plenary Session, JP Rangaswami, John Hagel, Umair Haque, and Ellen Levy talked about the financial crisis and whether it is a permanent discontinuity in market economics or just a temporary bump in the road? The consensus was that the current recovery is temporary and there are big problems ahead. John Hagel cited that big business has had a steady decline in return on assets for decades and there is no sign that it will reverse. Not a pretty picture. I am more optimistic than any of the panelists.

Another interesting panel was about whether "There is a Media Business?". Their consensus was that the world doesn't need newspapers, record labels, and TV broadcasters as we know them but it does need journalism and distribution mechanisms for quality entertainment and information. The focus of the discussion was whether innovative new forms of online media will replace what is lost as traditional industries collapse? Most of us would say yes.

My friend and moderator Tim O'Reilly moderated a discussion about "Going with the Flow". We are moving from a world of web pages to a rich and continuous stream of information. Emails replaced by tweets. A web page about train schedules replaced by real-time data on where the trains are at the moment. Reading a review of something replaced by tweets of where someone is having a meal and what music they are listening too. For some, all of this is too much, even for some techies. One thing I can say for sure. The trend to more and more information about everything and everybody is not going to reverse any time soon. Hopefully kids will learn that posting things about their social activities today may prevent them getting a job or getting elected in the future. There is a lot of room for some common sense.

The panel about telecommunications was really good. Paul DeSa from the FCC gave a glimmer of hope. The FCC really wants to maintain an open Internet, deploy broadband throughout the country, and keep competition going to increase innovation. As I have written here many times, I am convinced that Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T do not share any vision that might reduce their monopoly power and profitability. I am all for profitability but only in a competitive marketplace. The lack of adequate competition is why prices are high, contracts lock us in, Internet speeds are exaggerated, and customer service is poor. I am not in favor of expanded government but in the area of telecommunications the government is our only hope in the short run. Looking forward to Supernova in 2010.

Other conference related patrickWeb stories

Conferences, Internet Technology, Media, Mobile, Public Policy, iPhone December 6, 2009 01:30 PM

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

OCLC - Part 1

It is a privilege to be able to participate and contribute to various boards. It is also a way to learn a lot, meet great people and gain new perspectives. That has certainly been the case since I joined the board of OCLC (see press release). Fifteen years ago some pundits -- myself not included -- were saying that libraries were history -- as in toast -- they were not long for the emerging digital world. Been to a local or college library lately? They are full of people and many are expanding their facilities. Library use has doubled over the past decade. What happened to the digital "vision"? It turns out that the digital and physical can get along together quite well.

The month after I graduated from Lehigh University in 1967, OCLC -- Online Computer Library Center, Inc. -- was founded in Dublin, Ohio as a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs for libraries. More than 72,000 libraries in 171 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials. Each of these five verbs has special and profound meaning to a very large number of librarians and library visitors.

Over the months ahead, as I learn more about OCLC, some stories about the various services of OCLC will appear in follow-on postings. For now I will just highlight one of them -- the crown jewel -- WorldCat. WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services, connecting millions of users to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries around the world. WorldCat.org lets you search not just the collections of libraries in your community but thousands more around the world. Thirty-one million new records were added to WorldCat in the past year bringing the total to 139 million. How does WorldCat differ from other web resources?

Suppose you are doing some research on the origins of a town where you live and specifically you want to learn more about the history of Connecticut's Golden Hill Paugussett tribe . You might find a book for sale at Barnes & Noble or Amazon about the subject but not necessarily. Using the web site or your iPhone you visit WorldCat and do the search. WorldCat tells you that A history of Connecticut's Golden Hill Paugussett tribe is not available in the local library but it is available at the Fairfield University library just fifteen miles away. If you are not in a hurry you could stop at your local library and ask them to arrange an interlibrary loan for you. In the past the lending process was manual and costly but using WorldCat tools, the libraries can handle book loans quite easily. If you are not sure the book you found is exactly what you are looking for you might use WorldCat's "Ask a Librarian" service.

WorldCat allows you to search for books, music CDs and videos -- all of the physical items you're used to getting from libraries -- but you can also discover downloadable audiobooks, article citations with links to their full text, authoritative research materials, and digital versions of rare items that aren't available to the public. Some libraries allow you to join a waiting list, reserve the item, check it out or even have it shipped or delivered. WorldCat also leverages the social computing model by allowing you to enter ratings and reviews and contribute factual notes. The more people enter the more useful WorldCat becomes. That is their model -- enhancing the sharing of information on a global basis. The vision is "The world's libraries. Connected.".

OCLC Homepage

WorldCat

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy November 17, 2009 03:39 PM

Friday, October 30, 2009

Blogs and Advertising

Airplane

The FTC has been studying the relationship between blogging and advertising for some time and just a couple of weeks ago published their "Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials". The FTC really has their hands full trying to deal with the scammers and spammers out there -- unfortunately, there are a large number of people out there who want to invade our privacy and bombard us with advertising, much of it fraudulent. The focus of this latest announcement is on the not so subtle cases where bloggers conceal their relationships.

When I started blogging in 1998, my postings were what I called "reflections" -- experiences or opinions in various hobby areas. I would say most postings back then were from bloggers who were sharing information on technical topics. What later emerged was a group of bloggers who were experts on specific products or services. We all know people who seem to know much more than average about photography or how to use Netflix or whatever. Companies mostly ignored blogging in the early years but eventually they figured out that some of the bloggers were actually subject matter experts and equally important they were "influencers". People may not trust the company web site about XYZ digital cameras but they completely trusted "Phil's Photography Blog". This lead to companies paying close attention to these expert blogs and providing them with lots of information to insure the blogger had the facts. Then companies began to see the blogs as an advertising opportunity and they would put ads on the blogger site and pay the blogger for showing the ads.

Paid ads lead to paid fees or stipends to help support the blogger. Cynics might say that as the bloggers came to be dependent on this new source of income they may have lost their objectivity and independence. Perhaps their product reviews were no longer unbiased? That is the focus of the FTC -- extreme cases where there is significant money flowing but no disclosure by either the company or the blogger.

Disclosure is a good thing. For many businesses, the imposition of Sarbanes-Oxley and the associated disclosures that are required has become quite a burden in time, effort, and cost. For a blogger, however, disclosure is easy. When I started patrickWeb back in 1995 I added a disclosure page about the web site with a visible link on the home page. I updated it from time to time, most recently in 2005. The patrickWeb disclosure page describes my key affiliations, information policy, and privacy policy.

Blogging, People, Public Policy, patrickWeb October 30, 2009 01:36 PM

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Google Voice (or is it Google Data?)

Telephone Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a general term for a family of technologies that enable voice communications over the Internet (and corporate intranets). Strong double-digit growth has placed VoIP into everyday life for many millions of people. In the early days I used Packet8. Then a VoIP system was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a group of software engineers based in Tallinn, Estonia. I happened to be in Tallinn as part of a Baltic cruise a couple of years ago and wondered why the cobbled streets of a nearly thousand-year old small town on the Baltic Sea was lined with brand new high-end sedans. Later I realized that Tallinn was a mini Silicon Valley and home to the development of Skype. Skype became my "phone" for SMS messaging but especially for calling home from abroad for free. Skype was a game changer. A potentially even bigger game changer is Google Voice.

I have used a number of the VoIP services over the years but an impediment has always been that there was no way to use an existing contact list. With Google Voice you get instant synchronization with your Gmail contact list. When you start out you get a phone number -- you can pick most any area code you want. The new number then becomes your "universal" number. When someone calls it your cell phone, your office phone, you home phone, and vacation home phone all ring. You answer and hear who is calling and press 1 to accept the call. Or for some people that you designate, the call goes straight to voicemail. For others only your cell phone rings. You can add your contacts to different groups and have each group be treated differently. You can "ListenIn" on voicemails as they are being recorded and then decide to enter a conversation. When you receive a voicemail you get an email containing a machine transcription of the message. It is not perfect but good enough that you can tell who it is and what the call is about. You can block callers, record conversations, or add them into an ongoing conference call -- up to four callers can be added to the free conference call. The history tab in Google Voice shows all of your inbound and outbound calls. Needless to say you can search through the history of all your calls to refresh your memory about a conversation you had a year ago. SMS messages and all of your calls have shared inboxes, trash, history, and spam folders just like gmail.

The feature I like the most is that you can install X-Lite -- a free VoIP program that runs on your PC -- and add the associated SIP number as one of your Google Voice phone numbers. When a call comes in while you are at your PC, a dialogue box pops up on your display. You click "answer" and then the call can be handled with a headset (I use a Plantronics noise-canceling model) which provides hands-free high quality audio for me and the caller. Another nice feature is that you can make a Google Voice call from your iPhone (or any mobile phone). All U.S. calls are free. A call to Norway is two cents per minute. With free conference calls and a boatload of other free features, Google Voice is going to put the heat on the telephony monopolists. It will also put pressure on eBay's $2.5 billion acquisition of Skype for which they later took a $1.4 billion write-down.

Speaking of the telephony monopolists, there have been rumors -- denied by AT&T -- that the giant phone company told Apple not to approve Google mobile for the iPhone. Apple says it is looking into it. Apple's concern is that Google mobile is so tightly integrated and user-friendly that it takes away from the iPhone's branded look and feel as a phone. This is just the beginning of a clash between Apple and Google. As for AT&T, they like innovation as long as it is not at their expense. Google mobile would let people call Europe for free or close to free while AT&T charges $1.49 per minute unless you sign up for a monthly plan. Google Voice, Google mobile, Skype, and the many other innovative VoIP providers see a phone call as just another form of data and moving data around the Internet is very cost effective. AT&T sees a phone call as a voice service and they are trying desperately to protect their revenue by stifling progress.

The Wall Street Journal just published an excellent editorial on this subject called Why AT&T Killed Google Voice. The sub-title to the story is "Telecom operators are yesterday's business. It's time for a national data policy that encourages innovation". Author of the story Andy Kessler says the Federal Communications Commission is investigating wireless open access and handset exclusivity and that the result " may finally end the 135-year-old Alexander Graham Bell era. It's about time.".

Kessler says "AT&T is dying" and that they are "dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy". The problem is a lack of competition. Unlike all other Internet and data-related companies where there are thousands of competitors, when it comes to ownership of the spectrum -- the wireless pipe to customers -- that is hardly the case. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile joined AT&T in bidding some $70+ billion since the mid-1990s for spectrum. The cost gets passed on to us in the form of higher fees. They have not had to compete on price. Google Voice is the new competition offering voice service for free by leveraging their huge data handling systems resources and advertising revenue.

Kessler says we can live with overpaying for mobile but "it's inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications". Now the FCC and its new Chairman Julius Genachowski are getting involved. Hopefully the outcome will be deregulation not regulation. Many will call for a new national communications policy. But even that's obsolete and Kessler comes at it differently. "There is no such thing as voice or text or music or TV shows or video. They are all just data. We need a national data policy". There are four parts to Kessler's idea.

End phone exclusivity. Any device should work on any network -- yes, including the iPhone. Data should flow freely.
Transition away from giant companies owning airwaves and move to a standards based unregulated model like WiFi.
End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies -- yes, including Comcast. Recognize that "TV channels" are a thing of the past. Enable people to pay for what they want to watch and not have to pay for dozens of "channels" they don't watch.
Encourage much faster data connections to our homes and phones. Kessler says it should more than double every two years. To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011, 25 megabits in 2013 and 100 megabits in 2017. These data connection speeds are technically doable today but are being held back by obsolete voice and video policies made to satisfy the telecom giants and their legions of lobbyists.

I agree with Andy Kessler that technology doesn't wait around -- "so it's all going to happen anyway" -- but it will take years too long given the current course and speed. The best thing the new FCC could do would be to adopt the four pints above and then put itself out of business. New services like Twitter don't need to file with the FCC. Neither should new "voice" services. Voice is just another kind of data. Let's treat it that way.

Why AT&T Killed Google Voice

Internet Technology, Mobile, Public Policy, WiFi, iPhone August 22, 2009 06:46 PM

Monday, August 17, 2009

IBM Happenings: July 2009

The month of July was another busy one at IBM with a flurry of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and strategic alliances. See the list of press releases here and an index for prior months here. In addition to the major focus on a "smarter planet", IBM is investing in society. The company's social performance is right up there with it's financial performance.

Right after the fourth of July, IBM issued its annual Corporate Responsibility Report, detailing the company's social performance results and strategies in the areas of governance, supply chain, environment, community engagements, employment policies and practices, and public policy. The 40-page report features IBM's Corporate Service Corps, a program IBM characterizes as a corporate version of the Peace Corps with the goal of developing a next generation wave of IBM leaders while at the same time addressing critical societal challenges in emerging markets. The company is integrating business and social strategies to make significant and lasting impacts in communities. For example, in the Sichuan province in China, the area stricken by a powerful earthquake last year, teams of IBMers engaged in the relief and recovery effort using their technology skills. The development of the skills also presents economic opportunities for IBM so the corporate citizenship goes hand in hand with business.

The report also outlines how IBM is minimizing its environmental impact by developing innovative technologies to conserve more energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reusing and recycling IT equipment to reduce product waste, and utilizing environmentally preferable materials in its products and processes.

The company report describes how it provides employees with skills training, health and wellness programs, and opportunities to gain global experience. IBM also supports healthcare reform and has been advocating "Patient-Centered Medical Home" (PCMH), a model based on the concept of comprehensive primary care. I am enthusiastic about this initiative because it offers the chance to replace today's poorly coordinated, acute-focused, episodic care with coordinated, proactive, preventive, acute, chronic, long-term and end-of-life care. This approach is fundamental to the transformation of the U.S. healthcare system. Many believe this can be best accomplished by strengthening primary care. The "medical home" is an enhanced primary-care model that provides comprehensive and timely care and emphasizes the central role of teamwork and engagement by those receiving care.

The full corporate responsibility report is at http://ww.ibm.com/responsibility/

Other IBM Happenings for the month

Healthcare, IBM, Public Policy August 17, 2009 06:39 PM

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Comcasted - 2

Broken phone There have been a number of stories here about service problems with Comcast. The company unfortunately gets a lot of criticism and I must say it is mostly well deserved. The latest concern is that Comcast is getting very aggressive with email marketing campaigns -- most recently an invitation to participate in their sweepstakes.

It used to be that everything from Comcast was paper. Now it is paper plus a barrage of emails. Notices of my monthly statement and anything related to cable service is fine but I don't want "Channel 1 On Demand: July highlights". Hopefully, spam filters will be able to tell the difference. At the bottom of the sweepstakes e-mail was "THIS E-MAIL IS AN ADVERTISEMENT". Really? Not only is your inbox spammed but your intelligence is questioned.

To add insult to injury the sweepstakes e-mail said "To exclude yourself from receiving future mailings regarding sweepstakes, please send a written request to "Thank You Times 3 Sweepstakes" C/O Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC, Attention: Lifecycle Marketing, 1 Comcast Center, 1701 JFK Blvd., Philadelphia, PA 19103-2838." The e-mail went out in a blast but a request to respect your privacy requires a written letter. Then they sum it up with "Comcast respects your privacy"! I took a look at their privacy policy and not surprisingly the 5,645 word document was written by lawyers to be read by lawyers. I could rant on, as many people and journalists do, but I'll stop for now. Comcasted.

Internet Technology, Media, Public Policy July 23, 2009 06:12 PM

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Supernova 2008 - Part 6 (final)

Description of image

This will be my final comments about things I learned at Supernova 2008 in June. The prior comments are all in the conference section of patrickWeb. A "People" panel was moderated by BJ Fogg, whom I first met when he presented YackPack at Demo a few years ago. The research shows that people are endlessly creative, that the majority of most people's time is spent offline, and that there are very large differences between the skills people have in using the Internet. There is a correlation between skill level and willingness to share -- the more people know about the Internet the more likely they are to share what they know. Some argued that the skill level is a function of priority given. I am certain of that point. I know many people who could be web savvy if they wanted to be but they would rather play golf or work in the garden. Nothing wrong with that. There is a social technographics ladder that includes people who are inactive, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators. Some postulated that user background is related to digital media savvy but that it is not an age thing. Another study however showed a very strong correlation between age and these various categories. The study would suggest that at my age I should be technologically inactive! I guess I just don't fit the mold.

Social information discovery is a relatively new term but the phenomenon has been around from the beginnings of the Internet -- you can ask a question and get a lot of people to answer. Sharing today is still done mostly in email which puts high social activation energy on the sender but social networks are changing this. We will share a lot more in the future. Social sites are causing an evolution to the entire web becoming social. User generated content used to be something you go to a site to do like epinions.com or or ticketmaster to find out what people are saying. The problem is that you don't know the people who are making the comments. In the emerging social web you can see what your friends and colleagues think or what they are doing or what the friends of your friends think about restaurant, book, or movie. It is much more relevant.

There are a number of inhibitors to social networks reaching their potential. Our identity is too fragmented -- logins and passwords galore. We have profiles here, there, and everywhere. Applications are incompatible among the various social networks. I am optimistic that this will all come together in a way that meets our security and privacy expectations. The short answer to these concerns is the evolution of standards. OpenID is trying to create a single identification that you can use at any web site. Oauth is an emerging approach for authentication so that you can allow access for a web site to get information about you from another web site but only certain information you have authorized, not all the information. OpenSocial is developing an approach to allow a Facebook application to work at MySpace or any other social network. Google Friend Connect is attempting to bring all three of these together into a social web.

Although I remain optimistic about the concerns, a panel on "Privacy and Security in the Network Age" with Moderator Andrea Matwyshyn (Wharton), Bruce Schneier (BT Counterpane), Fran Maier (TrustE), Gerard Lewis (Comcast), and Lauren Gelman (Stanford CIS) dug into some of the stark realities. They attempted to answer the question of whether we are entering an era where individuals gain new control over their public personas, and powerful means to leverage reputations or will we be forced to abandon any hope of protecting our privacy and trusting what we encounter online?

Although he claimed to be optimistic, Bruce Schneier, a world renowned expert on privacy, was actually quite gloomy. Everything we do creates a transaction record and the resulting data records have value to others. Storage costs online are now so cheap, nothing gets thrown away. Google, your wireless provider, your healthcare insurance company, etc. all save every piece of data about you and what you do or look for. The trend will accelerate. There are many invasive technologies out there -- surveillance video cameras will be so small in the future that we won't know they are there. Our every movement will be captured. Soon we will be living in a world where no conversation will be private. While some frame the debate as security vs privacy, Bruce framed it as liberty versus control and said that "data is the pollution of the information age". In spite of these pronouncements, the experts are short term pessimistic but long term optimistic. Me too. The government may be watching us but we can watch them too.

The final session I attended was about Broadband Policy. The United States now ranks 15th in the world in terms of availability of broadband to consumers. We had a discussion about what we would do about it if we became policy advisor to the new president. We came up with the following.

A lot of us suggested getting rid of the FCC. It's an ineffective political entity. Other suggestions were to map the gaps where infrastructure and users are and are not, take spectrum policy and flush it, take on universal service and revamp it to focus on broadband instead of pay phones, Un-ban municipal wireless broadband, and benchmark the US against other countries. There are some good things happening such as Verizon's deployment of optical fiber but overall there is not enough competition and there are too many lobbyists seeking protection for large telecommunications companies. When I spoke at the World Wide Web conference in Paris in 1994 the U.S. was the Internet leader. France was skeptical to be kind. Today France is enabling WiFi throughout the country and partnering with utility companies to offer broadband at 100 times the speed of what the U.S. telcos define as broadband. I would like to be more optimistic on this front but I do not know of another industry (telecommunications providers) that have so many lobbyists urging protection and so many customers who are locked into services that they don't like.

Other patrickWeb stories about conferences

Conferences, Internet Technology, People, Public Policy, WiFi August 16, 2008 11:15 AM

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Supernova 2008 - Part 5

Description of image I learned a lot at Supernova as I do every year. It is difficult to explain the depth and breadth of what transpired at the conference, but hopefully I will hit some highlights and provide links where you can learn more. One of the many interesting topics was "networks" -- something that we take for granted. Three experts talked about the diversity of very large types of networks including baggage routing networks of an airline, electrical grid networks, natural gas distribution, the global aviation system, the Internet, and of course our social networks. The big picture is that social networks are evolving to the point that the entire World Wide Web is likely going to become the Social Web.

A social network is a structure consisting of nodes (people or organizations) that have a common interest or increasingly a dependency. The tie that binds us can be one or more of many things: values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, food likes or dislikes, buy or sell trading, links to each other's blogs, epidemiology, or airline routes. The resulting ontologies are very complex. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families to countries. The use of the networks is beginning to be a key tool in collaboration to solve problems, how people achieve their goals and even how organizations are run.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all the relevant ties between the nodes (people). One of the first social networks was Linkedin and I have been a member of it from nearly the beginning. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get several invitations to become a "friend" or "colleague" with another Linkedin member (or Plaxo Pulse or Facebook). To gain the real "network effect" I recommend being selective in dealing with these invitations. Otherwise you end up connected to everybody which is as valuable as being connected to nobody. There are many people who are looking for people to send press releases to or to throw you into a recruitment pool or just be able to say they "know" someone or is their "friend" because they saw your name in the paper or saw you at a conference. The real power is not in the numbers per se but to really know someone who knows someone who knows someone and to have the credibility with the person you know such that they are willing to help you to connect to someone else. I have 178 trusted friends and colleagues in my Linkedin network. Two degrees away -- friends of friends; each connected to one of my connections -- there are more than 60,000 people. Three degrees away -- members who can be reached through a friend and one of their friends -- is 3,200,000 people. If you are discerning about it you can develop considerable social capital.

There are many issues in the social networking space. One of them is that there are so many networks. If you take a look at the end of this story you will see -- and if you like the story and click on the green icon, a dialogue box offers you three functions. You can send an email link to the story to friends. A second choice is that you can post the story to your own blog. Perhaps most important is the third choice which is to post the story at one or more of your favorite social networks. The dialogue box displays icons for the various social networks -- Facebook and thirty-nine other of the top forty networks! A few mouse clicks and you have the ultimate chain letter. I think ShareThis has great potential.

How many social networks should you belong to? Certainly not forty. I belong to Linkedin, Plaxo Pulse, Facebook, and MySpace. Four is enough for me. But is it? There are many niche networks -- such as A Small World -- that will be of interest to m any. But do you want to create a profile of your personal information at each of the networks you choose? And keep them up to date? And tell your connected friends what you are doing and exactly where you are (latitude and longitude) and what music you like or even what song you are listening to at the moment? To me the glass is half full. I am hopeful that protocols will emerge such as OAuth, OpenID, and OpenSocial that will level the playing field. We will be able to use one single "sign-on" for all our web sites and create *one* profile and have control over which networks and which parts of the profile it appear in. For example, it would be nice to create a comprehensive profile that is encrypted and totally under the user's control. You may choose to have your favorite songs be accessible through Facebook but not your medical records from Google Health and your Google Health electronic medical record to be accessible to your primary care physician and your hospital but nobody else. The application you create for your consulting business or a new game you created could be available through *all* the social networks.

Social networking is the next turn of the crank of the Internet. By combining networks, such as a mobile phone networks, mobile payment systems, the Internet and a network of people all sharing a common cause, a viral effect can take place resulting in a lot of money or assistance flowing to the need -- political, emergency response or (hopefully) humanitarian.

Security and privacy issues with social networking? Another story to come soon.

Other patrickWeb stories about conferences
Other patrickWeb stories about Internet technology

Blogging, Conferences, Internet Technology, Public Policy July 23, 2008 09:35 PM

Monday, July 7, 2008

How To Remove AOL Advertising From Your Email

Privacy please In the last Supernova story I opined about how bad TV advertising is. The broadcast networks are not the only culprits who are bombarding us with their messages. In fact one of the worst perpetrators is AOL. Millions of people use AOL for their email service. No problem with that but AOL appends an ad at the end of every email their users send. I got an email from a fellow board member this morning and the epilogue said "Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for fuel-efficient used cars.". How bad is that? My distinguished colleague sending me used car ads!

This is a classic case of Opt In vs. Opt Out. When you get an AOL email account, they automatically Opt you In to include advertising at the end of your emails. It is possible to Opt Out but it isn't easy. They intentionally make it hard or at least do not intentionally make it easy. I asked my friend if he realized he was being "used" as a carrier for AOL advertising -- for which they are getting paid and he isn't. Like many others that I have asked that same question, his response was "I am aware and very annoyed by it but don't know how to get rid of it". I decided to do some research to see if I could help reduce the AOL spam from our inboxes and outboxes. The simple answer is for AOL users to click here and then uncheck the check box and click save. Three simple mouse clicks and a lot of senders and receivers will be happy.

Net Attitude, People, Personal Computing, Public Policy July 7, 2008 10:53 AM

Monday, December 17, 2007

Privacy City

Private Property One element of privacy on the Internet is "Opt in" versus "Opt out". When you register at a web site you will often see a small box to be checked giving you the “option” to be included or not included in subsequent emails making offers to you. Opt in means you proactively choose to be included. Opt out means you are included by default and you have to take action to be removed from the list of those who will automatically receive the emails. In some cases you have to read the words very carefully to determine which case is the default. This is part of Trust. Is the site really opening up to you and making it very clear what your options are, or are they making the words a bit fuzzy and hoping you won’t figure out what the default actually is?

Citibank introduced a service called c2it back in 2000 that enabled the sending and receiving of cash via email. You simply visited the c2it site, specified which of your checking, savings, or credit card accounts you wanted the money to come from, and entered an email address for someone you want to send the money to. That person would then receive an email, was asked to enroll in c2it, and then could accept the money from you directly into their checking, savings, or credit card account. This seemed like a potentially useful service to me when I learned about it and so I enrolled. Only after I enrolled did I find out that there were fees involved. Then I discovered that incoming amounts are not credited to your account for five to six days, which is longer than if I had received a check and deposited it myself. Then I discovered that there is no fee to receive into a Citibank credit card but there is a fee if it is another bank’s credit card. I am not saying the fees are unreasonable – the competition from PayPal and other services would determine that. C2it ceased operations in 2003. If you visit the c2it site you are told that you could contact c2it for a copy of your statement by writing a letter to "Customer Service Center" in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and provide them with your full name, e-mail address, phone number, and a copy of your social security card, driver's license, or a telephone bill, gas or electric bill or bank statement from the last 30 days. What would they do with all that information? Probably sell it to other companies. If you have any doubt of that, just read the Citibank Privacy Notice.

Fast forwarding seven years I would have been hopeful that Citibank would become a leader in gaining our trust. Unfortunately, not the case. Who might Citibank share your personal information with? The list includes affiliates among the family of companies controlled by Citigroup as well as non-affiliated third parties, such as financial services providers and non-financial organizations, such as companies engaged in direct marketing. I can't think of much that doesn't fall into one of those categories. What information is it that they might "share"? Your name, e-mail address, zip code, age and income range, information you provide on applications and other forms, information about your transactions with affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties, information received from a consumer reporting agency and information received about you from other sources. I can't think of much that is not included.

We are talking about a sweeping allowance to provide a broad and undefined amount of information about you with a broad and undefined audience. If you touch Citibank you will quickly start receiving marketing offers. Citigroup says "We may do this even if you ask us to limit disclosure of personal information about you". Not that it really matters, as they say, but how would you make a request to have your privacy respected? You would send them a "Privacy Choices Form" by U.S. mail. Mail? Yes, snail mail. This highly automated web savvy giant can transfer money in and out of any of your accounts in milliseconds but to have your privacy respected "please allow thirty days from our receipt of your privacy choices for them to become effective".

The issue is trust. It was easy to get the feeling that Citibank was not being forthcoming about their c2it offering. Citibank reminds us that it is "allowed by law to share with its affiliates any information about its transactions or experiences with you". Should the default be “check this box if you do not want this"? Seems to me that it should be opt in not opt out.

Brand used to be a feeling conjured up by how a company's product was physically packaged or how you imagined yourself using it. Increasingly brand is a feeling conjured up by your experience on that company's web site and from it's privacy policy. These tie directly to Trust. Companies that have a web site that provides an end-to-end positive experience and which enhances people’s quality of life by saving them time will gain enhanced brand equity. The converse will become obvious. Web sites already have a repository of huge amounts of personal data that represent the byproduct of not just our registrations but also our surfing habits, our purchases, and our interactions with others. In the near future our medical records will be on a web site somewhere and beyond that will come real time data streamed from pacemakers and other medical instruments that are attached to our bodies. All of this data can bring significant benefits to us but only if we are able to trust the holders of the data and have confidence that they will protect it and respect our preferences about how and when it can be used.

Epilogue: This is not a story picking on Citibank. They are one of the giants and they put things in our physical mailboxes on a regular basis, so they have no place to hide. Unfortunately, most privacy policies out there resemble what I have discussed here.

Other patrickWeb stories about Privacy and Trust

Internet Technology, PKI, Public Policy, e-Business December 17, 2007 05:33 PM

Sunday, November 25, 2007

One Laptop Per Child

There will be millions of iPhones, Casio cameras, and other electronic gifts given this holiday season. If you want to give the gift of a lifetime and get satisfaction that you are helping improve the world, then consider buying a Laptop XO. For the price of an Amazon Kindle, you can be part of a really big idea. Originated at MIT, One Laptop Per Child, aims to put computers in the hands of millions of children in developing countries. "One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time".

The OLPC laptop has been in development for years but is now becoming a reality. Manufacturing has started and orders are being taken online between now and yearend. For $399, get a laptop for yourself -- or a lucky child you may know -- and one will also be given to a less fortunate child in Cambodia, Greece, Nigeria, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uruguay, or other participating countries. (The countries themselves are buying XO's -- Nigeria ordered one million of them). The two-for-one deal includes a full year of T-Mobile Hotspot WiFi service.

The XO has quite an impressive set of features and functions. The design optimizes power usage. The Internet connectivity is by WiFi but it also uses wireless mesh networking. This means that each XO acts as a wireless access point in a peer-to-peer fashion sharing connectivity with a nearby XO. The software is all open source and free including Linux, a web browser, word processor, email, audio and video player, and a very clever graphical user interface.

I hope large numbers of people, companies, and foundations participate in the limited time offer and that many millions of children will benefit. As an individual, the T-Mobile WiFi subscription for a year plus the $200 tax deduction for the donated laptop, it is hard to go wrong. Visit LaptopGiving.org during the holidays and you can make a difference.

Internet Technology, Media, Mobile, People, Personal Computing, Public Policy, WiFi November 25, 2007 10:56 AM

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Speed Demon

Speed skater I felt very fortunate to turn 62 earlier this month but I would feel even more fortunate if I was Sigbritt Lothberg. Not because she has reached the distinctive age of 75 but because she has the world's fastest Internet connection. Ms. Lothberg -- of Karlstad, Sweden -- has a 40 gigabit-per-second connection. That means that, if she was so inclined, she could download a full-length movie to her home computer in less than 2 seconds! That would be 75,000 times faster than what most of us get from a cable modem. Lothberg's son, Peter, worked with a town official to install the connection which uses a new modulation technique that allows the sending of data between two routers -- the specialized computers that move packets of ones and zeroes around the Internet -- placed up to 1,240 miles apart. Although this is not a likely scenario, it does show the possibilities for Internet speed. Peter says "she didn't even have a computer before." Apparently she isn't exactly making the most of her high-speed connection. She only uses it to read Web-based newspapers, but that is not the point.

The point is that -- especially in America -- there is not enough competition. While Ms. Lothberg is enjoying lightning speed with her Internet connection, AT&T and Verizon are each spending more than $20 million per year on lobbying. Unfortunately, much of the lobbying is aimed at preventing competition, especially in the wireless area. There is a perception that wireless is inherently much slower than "wired" connections. Actually, the ones and zeroes do not care whether they are moving through copper, or glass fiber, over the power grid, or through the air. The issue is not technology, it is about having widely available and open wireless networks with lots of competition. Some people worry that Google is the next juggernaut, like IBM in the 1960's and Microsoft in the 1990's, but if it was not for Google, the spectrum that will be made available for new wireless networks when TV goes digital in 2009, that spectrum would all be gobbled up by AT&T and Verizon to be parceled out according to their (limited) vision of what is possible and in a very proprietary way. If Google and others get a hold of that spectrum we will have an open approach and likely see some breakthroughs in speed and coverage for the wireless Internet.Stay tuned for a WiFi update in the next few days.