Google Foundation kicks it up a notch

I like to see this type of activity, I hope we see much more of this, as it sounds like a neat way to build capacity, business capability, innovation and make it happen from the inside out.

Google Foundation has really started to kick into gear with a number of committments. They recently had one of their funded agencies post on the Google blog with an article entitled "TechnoServe update: New program in Ghana". TechnoServe is one of the agencies supported by Google, they focus on helping entreprenuers in developing regions -- apparently they are after my own heart!

I'm definitely going to do some more research on both of these organizations. I had noticed Google Foundation earlier when they hired Larry Brilliant as the Executive Director back in February, but TechnoServe is new to me (well, I'm actually rather new to this area, so there is a whole lot that is new to me!).

Kipp

FON and Google

So now that a couple of patent applications from Google (and more) have surfaced around user access/behavior at hot spots, how do you think that plays together with their investment in FON?

Suppose providers are able to somehow participate in the game through a shared advertising model in which the access point provider received something (discount?) and the network provider also shared in the loot. Google wins through getting more users and uses online (and perhaps through its FON investment). Can community access combined with ad shaping help. Certainly through access points you will be able to do a heck of a job with location (especially if you add something like WPS to your total package). Ads based on location (and perhaps user preferences, behavior, etc.) would seem to be an attractive idea for advertisers...

The actual patents are (courtesy of a CNET article):

• 20060058019 - Method and system for dynamically modifying the appearance of browser screens on a client device
• 20060059044 - Method and system to provide advertisements based on wireless access points
• 20060059043 - Method and system to provide wireless access at a reduced rate

On a similar topic, I recently reviewed an academic paper entitled "Global Growth of Open Access Networks: from WarChalking and Connection Sharing to Sustainable Business" by Roberto Battiti, Renato Lo Cigno, Fredrik Orava, and Bjorn Peherson. This paper, published in 2003 discussed some alternatives and issues with creating a more open access network in which the infrastructure could be provided by multiple parties and the services that layer on top could be from multiple different providers. They certainly did not bring the concept of advertising as a method for solving the economic puzzle, but did a fairly good job of outlining many of the issues: technical, business, economic, and cultural.

It almost look like some combination of these models could help extend the reach of wifi and still make it a business for operators and service providers...I guess we'll see soon enough!

Kipp

No piggybacking in Illinois

So, I guess you shouldn't hang around in your car with a laptop...A man in Illinois just plead guilty to using someone else's network without permission. $250 and a year of court supervision should teach him!

I wonder how this would have played out in an Open Access Network world? Is it possible to create a model in which someone like FON can open up the last mile to provide more complete coverage? It doesn't feel like the big providers will willingly give up their lock on this, but perhaps there's a business model that will eventually emerge that makes sense to them...

Meanwhile over in WiMAX world, the WiMAX Forum just certified some more products in the 3.5Ghz spectrum for fixed wireless, pushing the standard towards further deployment with their "Plugfest". We should see WiMAX starting to make an impact this year with the rollout of these interoperable products.

Kipp

Location, location, loki

Disclaimer: I consult for Skyhook Wireless so consider my bias (although I wasn't paid to write this)!

Location based services continue to garner interest among users, businesses, search engines, advertisers and entrepreneurs. I've been fortunate enough to have worked closely with a company that just got included in Gartner's "Cool Vendors in Mobile and Wireless, 2006" publication (ID Number: G00138458). I can't actually post the info or I'd get strung up, but it is cool!

The problem? It's hard to give location information if you don't know (more specifically, if your computing device doesn't know) where you are. The more precise the location, the better services are able to provide location specific information back to you/your computing device. We're all familiar with GPS, and some are likely familiar with Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) and Assisted GPS (A-GPS), but Skyhook has attaked the problem by using the ever growing infrastructure that is created by the wifi networks.

Rather than relying on satellites for positioning, the system utilizes wifi access points to provide location information. All that is needed is a lightweight client and a device that supports wifi (and in general, a connection to the Internet -- although this is not strictly required it sorta makes sense).

Wireless Positioning Service (WPS) is not a cure all, clearly it needs a certain density of wireless access points in order to do its job accurately. This, as of now, relegates the service to urban (and indoor) settings in which wifi radio waves are bouncing all over the place. Interestingly, this is also where GPS sometimes has a harder time. It's also handy in that no additional hardware is necessary, if you have a wifi interface, you can use the service.

They recently went Beta with a browser toolbar (pretty soon, there will be no room in my browser for actual content, all I'll have is a stack of toolbars!) called Loki. I personally think the toolbar cool and useful, but I'll let others that aren't as biased explain:

• Lookie at Loki: Wi-Fi Begets Latitude, Longitude

• JiWire's Weekly Guide to Wi-Fi (Friday, March 24) (sorry, no link)
  

• Loki turns your Wi-Fi laptop into a GPS
• Turns Laptop into GPS with Loki
• Loki will tell you where to go - on your laptop
• Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
  
• Free Loki (Wi-Fi location solution)
• Loki: Location-Based Internet Search & Navigation
• Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
• Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
• Skyhook Wireless Offers Loki Local Toolbar
• Software Which Turns Laptops Into GPS
• Loki turns your Wi-Fi laptop into a GPS
• Loki Tells Where You Are
  

There are probably others, but this seems like a good list to start things off...

I'm just bummed that there isn't a mac version out yet!

Kipp

Ireland versus Warcraft

John Paczkowski of SiliconValley.com caught my eye with this quote:

If subscribers to "World of Warcraft," the most widely played massively multiplayer online game in the world, were to form a country, it would be bigger than Ireland.

Ireland now has some 4,015,676 people according to the CIA...that's a lot of online players!

Cognitive Radio

There is a cool trend happening where our wireless interfaces are getting smarter and smarter. This has been coined Cognitive Radio (this is related to Software Defined Radio and Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks ).

A recent highlight from MIT Technology Review's emerging technologies takes us to some research being done in UC Santa Barbara by Heather Zeng on the topic.

I was first introduced to this about a year ago on a campus visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder. One of the profs there, Douglas Sicker had been working on the SDR side of things for a bit of time and appears to still be working in that direction.

It hit me again last fall in a talk given by Benny Bing on the topic of "Broadband Wireless Access - The Next Wireless Revolution". Here is one of his slides as an example.

My understanding is fairly limited, but the idea is to move the radio and management of the radio further up the stack allow software to modify and shape the radio output (modulation, demodulation, signal processing, etc.). This allows really nifty things like frequency and power shifting to the software layer based on feedback and monitoring of the spectrum. So SDR refers to the radio side of things, better/smarter hardware, while Cognitive Radio is the software that takes advantage of this shape shifting hardware and is taking some shape in the 802.22 standard. Wikipedia offers some good info on Cognitive Radio including the claim that the term was first officially presented by Joseph Mitolla III and Gerald Q. Maguire, Jr. in an IEEE article in 1999.

Of course this represents some interesting challenges for the policy, certification and enforcement sides of things. It also has some interesting challenges on the technical side, which is what the MIT article represents -- the use of game theory to determine what spectrum to use...

This certainly has impact on urban zones where spectrum is heavily used, especially with the release (at some point) of the existing TV bandwidth as we move to HD. I'm wondering if this helps in rural and developing areas. I can see advantages as far as being able to make equipment compliant to spectrum policies at a software level rather than at a hardware level. And hypothetically, they would be more future proof, as spectrum opened up, the systems could be switched to take advantage of the new spectrum without hardware replacement.

This also could have some impact on RFID and sensor networks, especially as things move from region to region in which frequency and power specifications/requirements are different.

Kipp

Tech's Tiger Teams

Just caught this on /. and couldn't pass it up...the original article is called Finding security's next 'American Idol'.

The basic idea is to have a competition to search for security technology that is simple to use and easy to understand. Congratulations to the three Tiger Team winners!

The article includes some sound bytes from Keith Edwards (one of my colleagues at Tech the first time I went through and is now a prof.) and Mustaque Ahamad one of my past and present professors and the head of the Information Security Center at Tech.

Some of the comments on slashdot are rather humorous... I like this one:

At 69 cents for the 'good' Ramen (Maruchian), $50K would buy 72463 grad student meals. That's enough to feed 66 grad students 3 meals a day for a year!!

And this one:

Georgia Tech College of Computing, Information Security Center and Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center
what's that, the GTCOCISCGVUC
... geeks, learn to be succinct!

Kipp

GT: Innovating Here and Now

Well, for all of you who missed this, the Georgia Tech Alumni Association put on a very interesting talk last night.

Three quite distinguished faculty presented some exciting work that is going on at Tech. The first, Dr. Roger Webb (ECE), discussed the Strategic Energy Initiative in which Tech is working to try to help out on the energy crisis. 2 key things, a feasability study with Georgia Southern using a wind farm off the coast of Savanah, and experimentation with using soft wood pulp to generate ethanol. These will certainly not solve the issue, but could help ease the problems on both the electricity and the vehicle fuel issues.

The second presentation was by Dr. David Parekh, Deputy Director of GTRI. GTRI now has over 1,200 folk with about a $140 million annual budget. He spent some time on two fascinating developments.

The first you may have caught in the news, the Ultra AP (Armored Patrol) vehicle which was featured in many publications including Fortune and Rolling Stone among others. A couple of innovative features of the vehicle:

1. Built on COTS parts as much as possible starting with an F-350 chassis.
2. Introduces the 'blast bucket' which is built to protect the people, not the vehicle. They consulted with NASCAR folk to learn what safety features they had developed and added some new things as well.
3. 360-degree seating. The passengers sit around the center facing out -- giving visibility and protection on all sides of the vehicle. It also ends up being better for communications as the heads of the people are closer together.
4. Lighter weight armor. Some compound they built which is much lighter than the steel armor currently employed saves weight and thus the vehicles can actually get decent fuel efficiency.
5. From initial 'napkin' drawing to prototype vehicle in 1 year.
   

There are other features, but these stood out. Ultimately, all of these are meant to save lives, which seems to me like a very fine cause.

The second GTRI development is the creation of an International Applied Research Institute in Ireleand. This new development will focus on 4 key things:

1. IPTV
2. RFID
3. Biotechnology
4. Sustainable Energy

I hadn't realized, but per capita, Ireland is now the 2nd richest country in the EU. That's quite a dramatic change in a relatively short amount of time. Good stuff...

The last speaker was Dr. Don P. Giddens, Dean of the College of Engineering. He focused on the collaboration with Emory in the Winship Cancer Institute. Fascinating work on engineering chemicals and delivery agents to attack cancer cells while leaving the rest of the body in good health. Quantum dots, docking molecules, all sorts of whacky things going on. They have very good funding and are currently working on getting designated as a Comprehensive Cancer Center of which there are fewer than 50 in the states and none currently in Georgia.

----

It's clear that Tech is making lots of progress locally, nationally, and internationally as the interdisciplinary collaborations and activities seem to be reaching a fevered pitch. Exciting stuff to be associated with, and research that is working on some problems that will have huge impacts worldwide.

Hurricanes and Tech

As I mentioned in my Political Edge post, Judith Curry at Georgia Tech was doing some research on the hurricane frequency and it's now been reported in ScientificAmerican.com. According to the report about the increase in hurricanes and their strength, a "new statistical analysis shows that only this sea surface temperature increase explains this trend."

This article was really just a summary of the real article which is in the March 13th edition of Science online, check out the abstract. According to the abstract (I didn't buy the article, and it doesn't seem to be available via my GT library account), the researchers "use a methodology based on information theory, isolating the trend from the shorter term natural modes of variability. Results show that the increasing trend in number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the period 1970-2004 is directly linked to the trend in SST." Here, SST means Sea Surface Temperature.

Tech released some additional info on the research, but still no article. An earlier article is available though. I'll keep digging to get the full article...

Religious history and public school

While I'm expanding my blog...first politics and now religion...I thought I'd share some thoughts on a bill that is going through Geogria's legislature right now. Senate Bill 79 provides for the introduction of a couple of elective courses within the public schools. In particular, these are courses based on history as presented in the Bible. Apparently, this bill passed our Senate with a vote of 50-1, and is currently under consideration by our House.

The bill provides for 2 elective courses:

1. History and Literature of the Old Testament Era
   
2. History and Literature of the New Testament Era

I agree that an understanding of the stories in the Bible is useful and that references are all around us, so I don't object to kids learning about this. What I do object to is the fact that it is only the Bible, explicitly so. According to the text of the bill:

The courses provided for in this Code section shall:
(A) Be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students as to either the truth or falsity of the biblical materials or texts from other religious or cultural traditions;
(B) Not include teaching of religious doctrine or sectarian interpretation of the Bible or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions; and
(C) Not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.

(B) excludes any other religious texts from being introduced, taught or discussed. Holy cow, wouldn't it be better if we did a more comprehensive introduction to the various religious texts that different religions are based on, rather than having Bible Study? Let's teach our kids that the world (shrinking as it is) has many different beliefs and, by the way, here are some of the texts on which these beliefs are based on. Then, if you are so inclined, you can delve deeper into the particulars of your religious beliefs, but it's not only helpful to know the history of the Bible, but also the history, differences, and similarities with other religious beliefs.

My guess is that since we've successfully (so far) kept religion out of the science classes, we are trying to find other ways into the classroom, and this happens to be a convenient path. I don't like it one bit given that it is exclusionary, which I believe is the root of all evil.
My letter to my state representative, Jan Jones:

I understand there is a Senate Bill 79 which provides for the state funding of an elective in History and Literature of the Old Testament Era and an elective course in the History and Literature of the New Testament Era.

I would urge you to vote against this bill. While I agree that students should learn about the stories in the Bible as they are in general good stories and have basis in history, I strongly object to this being the only and exclusive religious based history that is taught in our public schools.

I would back a bill that would introduce and teach students about the various and diverse religious texts, writings, and learnings, but I believe it is a gross misuse of public funds to teach an exclusively Bible based religious history. I feel that an introduction to the broader world of religious history would be useful and feel that teachings on a single religious text should be the job of the church.


Thank you,


Kipp Jones

p.s. I used Congress.org to get my message through...

At the speed of Blog

Apparently the speed with which new (correct and misinformation) travels can leave some great gaps and provide ample opportunity for misquotes to be propagated and expanded like the waves of a tsunami. Such was the case with Andrew McLauglin's comment purportedly stating that the "FCC Sucks". As noted by Om, Andrew attempted to clear up the misquote informing us that his statement was taken completely out of context. Andrew's full response is online, but to paraphrase (rather than quote), he was stating one of the 5 arguments used by libertarian opponents of 'Net Neutrality', not his opinion.

So, if I get this straight, Andrew is saying that we can and should regulate for Net Neutrality and that the FCC is fully capable of handling this task? Hey, I'm all for net neutrality, as I really don't see good coming from having the industry tax content based on their desires to get their content out first/best, and there is some logic for a bidding war on the bandwidth, but don't both consumers and companies already pay the telcos for access to this bandwidth? And when has 'unlimited' mean only as much as they want you to use?

I can see some pricing plans that limit the bandwidth (haven't they tried these?), but I don't expect the public to sit idly by and have the telcos decide which services the customer should get high quality of service and which ones should get poor quality.

And what ever happened to 'bandwidth is free'???

Kipp

p.s. Andrew is the Senior Policy Counsel for Google, not the General Counsel as previously posted.

National Security Strategy

The US published a new National Security Strategy recently which sets the overall agenda and timbre of our foreign policy (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/). As one article states, "the national security strategy is very crucial and it shapes the future characteristics of US relations with other players of the international community."

There are numerous summaries online that report interesting elements of the new document (first time it has been updated since 2002, prior to the Iraq invasion. You can get multiple perspectives by searching on "national security strategy" in google news (or your favorite). Most of the online news is about Iran as the document singles that country out as the single biggest current danger (page 20).

I thought I'd summarize the elements in the document that address Latin America, minimal though it is.

Section II, "Champion Aspirations for Human Dignity", Latin America gets a nod as "Democracy has made further advances in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, with peaceful transfers of power; growth in independent judiciaries and the rule of law; improved election practices; and expanding political and economic rights."

The next mention comes in Section IV, "Work with Others to Defuse Regional Conflicts." Page 15 has several bullet points:

• In Colombia, a democratic ally is fighting the persistent assaults of Marxist terrorists
and drug-traffickers.

• In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and
seeking to destabilize the region.

• In Cuba, an anti-American dictator continues to oppress his people and seeks to
subvert freedom in the region.

I like the reference to Hugo as a demagaogue (wikipedia has a definition as "one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."). A bit of an insult thrown at the president there.

Next, we see some discussion in Section V, "Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade", regarding bilateral trade agreements (page 25):

• Partnered with Congress to pass the Central America Free Trade Agreement – Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR), long sought by the leaders of El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Dominican Republic;

and again in the same section on 'The Way Ahead' (page 28):

• In our own hemisphere, we will advance the vision of a free trade area of the Americas by building on North American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA-DR, and the FTA with Chile. We will complete and bring into force FTAs with Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama.


In section VII, "Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy", Chile gets a little nod on page 34:

"Our assistance efforts will also highlight and build on the lessons learned from successful examples of wise development and economic policy choices, such as the ROK, Taiwan, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Chile, and Botswana. "

Section VIII, "Develop Agendas for Cooperative Action with the Other Main Centers of Global Power" has a sub-section on our hemisphere (page 37):

These principles guide our relations within our own Hemisphere, the frontline of defense
of American national security. Our goal remains a hemisphere fully democratic, bound
together by good will, security cooperation, and the opportunity for all our citizens to
prosper. Tyrants and those who would follow them belong to a different era and must not
be allowed to reverse the progress of the last two decades. Countries in the Hemisphere
must be helped to the path of sustained political and economic development. The
deceptive appeal of anti-free market populism must not be allowed to erode political
freedoms and trap the Hemisphere’s poorest in cycles of poverty. If America’s nearest
neighbors are not secure and stable, then Americans will be less secure.

Our strategy for the Hemisphere begins with deepening key relationships with Canada
and Mexico, a foundation of shared values and cooperative policies that can be extended
throughout the region. We must continue to work with our neighbors in the Hemisphere
to reduce illegal immigration and promote expanded economic opportunity for
marginalized populations. We must also solidify strategic relationships with regional
leaders in Central and South America and the Caribbean who are deepening their
commitment to democratic values. And we must continue to work with regional partners
to make multilateral institutions like the OAS and the Inter-American Development Bank
more effective and better able to foster concerted action to address threats that may arise
to the region’s stability, security, prosperity, or democratic progress. Together, these
partnerships can advance our four strategic priorities for the region: bolstering security,
strengthening democratic institutions, promoting prosperity, and investing in people.

Note the mention that the "deceptive appeal of anti-free market populism must not be allowed to erode political freedoms" again might be pointing at our friends Hugo and Castro in particular, but I'm sure brings up the specter of others in the region that may be heading in that direction.

The final Latin America point comes in section X, "Engage the Opportunities and Confront the Challenges of Globalization" where we talk about narcs:

"To combat the cultivation and trafficking of narcotics, the Administration devotes over
$1 billion annually to comprehensive counternarcotics efforts, working with
governments, particularly in Latin America and Asia, to eradicate crops, destroy
production facilities, interdict shipments, and support developing alternative livelihoods."

My take is the order of priorities is something like:

1) Middle East (with Iran now taking the top spot in the top category)
2) Asia - Pacific
3) Europe, Mexico, Canada
4) Central & South America
5) Africa

Kipp

Personal wealth, Negroponte and the Sikorsky CH-53

So Negroponte has been working on his $100 laptop for every child which seems a noble if difficult row to hoe. He recently left MIT Media Lab to pursue this effort (to be replaced, notably, by Frank Moss) and is now chairman of the One Laptop Per Child organization







This just won't due for Mr. Gates, who was recently noted as 'mocking' Nicholas for his efforts (see Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop project). Apparently, Bill wants them to have $600-$900 devices based on the MS Origami.

This would be all well and good if he would use his money...but wait, even the richest person on the planet can't make that happen for all of the children!

And yet my friend, Charles Shapiro, noted that Bill has done good, giving enough money to malarial prevention to really make a difference, while our penny-pinching founder of Wal-Mart gave like $10,000 to charity during his stay (now, I haven't actually checked the figures, so maybe somebody else can do some fact checking for me).

Okay, so I mentioned Bill is the richest man on the planet, but what about intergalactically? And if there was competition, how would we measure and compare intergalactic wealth? Charles, always the thinking man, suggested using the Kardashev scale, essentially boiling the problem down to 'how big a rock can he lift?". Now, for clarity, I think we need to specify that we are not talking actual size, but equivalent mass with equivalent gravities, elsewise it might be a bit unfair.

So, a poor person could lift with their own strength plus perhaps a donkey. I could probably spring for a back-hoe for a day. But Bill, well, he could go out and get him a Sikorsky CH-53 to move his rock around.


I guess in the end, it comes down to technology!

Silicon Valley Quotes

I get a daily summary from SiliconValley.com (which, with the recent purchase of Knight Ridder by McClatchy is sorta in the air). The summary includes a rather humorous quote each day, this one caught my funny bone:

Q U O T E D

"I no longer keep an inventory of my possessions inside my own head. ... I don't hunt for my shoes in the morning, I just Google them."

-- Futurist Bruce Sterling, who has freed up cranial capacity by using remote storage, unconcerned that someday the government may know where his shoes are.

Wifi or Cellular

This seems to be an emerging conflict that doesn't have an easy solution. I haven't really seen a full blown comparison of the options, but it would be interesting.

Network World gives a small treatment (very small) but you can start to see the conflicts, the issues and the players as each side is trying to get its stance and arguments straight.

Certainly where existing cellular technology can be upgraded, it would seem to have a good argument. But as municipal wireless networks become more prominent, does that start to change the economics? Is it one or the other?

Oh this should be interesting...

Kipp

FCC and Google

Funny, I recently had a conversation with Andrew McLaughlin regarding the reserach I've been doing in Africa on regional telecom regulation and Internet interconnection. A very insightful fellow that added quite a bit of value to my research.

Well, he is the general counsel for Google and he recently showed up on one of my news feeds when he 'groused' about the FCC.

Om Malik pointed it out, with the original story on Light Reading.

I gotta tend to agree, the FCC hasn't had the best record, but then we usually only hear about the things they screw up, there has to be some good stuff in there somewhere, right? I just can't imagine good coming out of this 'QOS' charge that appears to me as nothing more than a tax, a troll, a burden, a leech on a growing buisness that the big boys want to latch onto.

Kipp

Political edge

A recent article about a speech that Sandra Day O'Connor purportedly made caused me a bit of pause. A couple of recent items stand out for me that make coincidence more like a trend in my mind:

1. This speech coming from a Republican -- and one who was responsible for upholding our Constitution
2. Oddly inconsistent behavior wrt Dubai ports deal
3. Wire tapping debacle
4. Education and Research
1. A recent seminar in which Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, discussed the current administration's crack-down on science from her perspective. In particular, the US is seen as
   completely out of touch when it comes to the issue of global warming. In some cases, we won't allow our scientists (within gov't control) to travel to international conferences on the subject. Here's a kicker. When W set up an advisory team on the issue, 1 of 3 out of the group was a novelist. Now, Michael Crichton is quite intelligent, a good novelist with in-depth research, and is certainly entitled to his knowledgeable opinions. But, given the depth of experience and knowledgeable actual scientists who have dedicated their lives to this issue, I find it hard to believe that he actually represented 33% of our highest qualified people on the topic...
2. Recent trends in education to reduce, subsume, confuse people about evolution are alarming at a minimum. Here in Georgia, we have major issues, with a county not more than 2 miles away (Cobb) trying to change science into religion. It seems that the courts are upholding their end by striking these down, but it's scary how often they have to do it.
   
3. Stem cell research...need I say more?
4. Funding -- I don't know enough of the details on education and research funding, but I do know that both are areas I'd like to see more focus on. Our research institutions must spend a large chunk of their productive time hunting down funding (at less than 10% funding rate from key funding sources such as NSF). We must lose a large amount of productivity due to this institutional behavior.
   
5. Continued reduction in information available via Freedom of Information Act
6. Indefinite detention in Guantanoamo Bay (seems to go against our constitution)
   
7. Iraq war (a person could point to a number of things here from pre-war build up, planning, execution, post-war, etc.)

I'm sure I'm missing things, and sorry that I don't have references yet, but wanted to get this into the ether. The one thing that is heartening, is that W's ratings have dropped precipitiously, perhaps as the evidence mounts, those of us who don't generally go for conspiracy theories start to really wonder...

Kipp

Municipal Wireless

The growth of municipal wireless in the US is a rather interesting development on many levels. You've got the policy side, the competition side, the technical side, the business model side, the services side, and the consumer side. How all these interact and play out in the US should make for some nice fireworks.

And it's not just the big cities that are getting into the fray. An organization in Vermont and New Hampshire is working to use wireless technologies to get to places that the traditional phone and cable companies won't reach with broadband. As they declare it, Cloud Alliance is the "Dirt Road Wireless" company.

Some folk believe this is just the beginning of the muni wireless boom -- well yeah, it's barely been actually deployed with some 320 cities that have or are planning on deploying broadband wireless networks in 2006. According to Demographia, there are about 1300 cities in the US with population over 25,000 people. And the Yankee Group projects spending on these networks to reach $400 million in 2007 (up from some $171 million this year) according to an article in Network World.

Beyond the US borders, though, wireless networks have some great potential to impact the reach of the Interenet in developing countries. How this can be realized is a much greater challenge than deployment in the US where the consumer base has such a large base with both the technical means (computing devices) and the financial wherewithal to take advantage of the network connectivity and services offered via the network.

I believe this is fertile ground for me to continue my research in wireless networking, policy, international development, and location based services. I'm meeting with Abe Kani, the CIO of Atlanta next week to discuss these topics and more. I'll let you know how that meeting goes and as I (hopefully) gain focus around these ideas.

Spring

It appears that Spring has sprung in Atlanta. It should get up to 77 degrees today, the trees are blooming, and Spring Soccer has kicked off for both girls. We may even make it to the lake today to help put the neighbor's boat back in the water for the first time this year!

Spring breaks are right around the corner which I hope will give me some time to catch up and maybe finish last semester's work!

Problem is, spring weather makes it really hard to focus on work/school!