@skykipp musings

Location & Proximity

2011-04-18T13:40:00.003-04:00

Yes, I'm finally back...and I mean it this time!

I've been thinking a lot about the difference and similarity of Location and Proximity. Most of what I've been doing in the last couple of years has focused on Location...latitude, longitude, altitude, place -- a named, specific space. Something that creates a binding with the world.

Pondering the difference between Location and Proximity makes me really want to illustrate the distinction. It is true that you can be in proximity of a Place, but you can also be in proximity of something that is less permanent, something ephemeral - temporary in time or space such as another person or a vehicle or another device.

Sometimes they run hand in hand -- for example when I drive on Mass Pike (and have that angry look in my eye) I come within proximity of the toll booth. For me to use my infamously misnamed FastLane transponder, I need to be in proximity of the toll booth...but we also now know that I was at that Location.

Sometimes location isn't necessary to have interactions. For example while driving around, I notice somebody sharing a song over their (still to come) auto-share audio system, I only really care that I am within proximity. Now, it might be interesting to add location to that so we can create some more social verve and track what songs are shared at what location and what times are most interesting for fellow listeners.

In fact we use proximity information every day to infer location on our system -- by knowing what signals are proximal to your device, we can infer that you are located near to the signal source -- whether it be a cell tower or a WiFi access point. By knowing that your device is proximal to multiple beacons, we can further refine the device's possible locations. We also use the proximal information to understand when and where beacons themselves are. By understanding proximity, location can be improved, refined, and corrected over time.

But how and when is proximity useful in and of itself? Certainly the NFC activity is very deeply tied with proximity. But location is nearly always an important part of this as well. Proximity is often used when talking about things -- where is the closest X (where X could be pen, defibrillator, beer, etc.). It's also interesting to think about proximity in activities like shopping. I always think of a geiger counter or the 'hotter-colder' game -- I want my phone to start beeping faster as I'm getting closer to my target. When hunting for my favorite toothpaste at the store, I want to know my proximity to my brand for example. Now, perhaps this is just a matter of computing the distance between two locations, or it might be using the signal strength to measure proximity, nonetheless, I don't really care that I'm in aisle 7 and looking at shelf 3...I care that I am near my goal.

But it seems in social activities, proximity could be quite useful. When checking in someplace, I don't necessarily only want to see all of the people in Starbucks (especially since I never go there), but perhaps to see friends or possible friends that are within some proximity of me.

So, while these two concepts of Location and Proximity do have a strong affinity to each other, they are not one and the same and should be treated as distinct entities.

Cheers,

Kipp

2010 And all is well

2010-03-29T20:53:00.003-04:00

I seem to have fallen off the writing wagon and would love to get back on it. Tweets just don't seem to satisfy my need and while Facebook is good for many things, I miss being able to actually write a full paragraph and have it somehow seem semi-permanent.

So, with that, I have renewed my intent to write...we shall see how well i do, but I feel confident that it's going to happen!

I'd like to close with a link to one of the authors I respect on both a technological philosophical level as well as from a science fiction perspective --

Cory Doctorow: Writing in the Age of Distraction

20 minutes each day is hereby dedicated to writing.

Cheers all,

Kipp

2009

2009-02-23T08:05:00.002-05:00

Okay, so it has been 1 year since I posted...I stink at this. I'm still at Skyhook in Boston and loving it (although if we could shrink winter, I'd be happier!).

A lot has happened in that one year (other than the global economic disaster, the historic presidential election, etc.), some location highlights:

Wifi positioning has become an accepted (expected?) method for enhancing location determination
Millions of devices are running our software
We grew to over 100M APs and over 400K Cells in our system
Major GPS vendors have licensed our tech to include XPS with their chips

2009 will:

see location becoming a first-class citizen at the OS/driver level
see a growth in privacy concerns as the number and types of apps grow
see a huge growth in web based location integration
see location based context become a focus
push the capabilities of indoor location to an unprecedented level

I'll be continuing to work with the team to push on these and other fun technology fronts (scalability being another interesting one) as well as working on some more futuristic researchy items related to the above.

On the personal front, probably best to track me on facebook if interested in that sort of thing.

I promise to push myself to keep this one active on the resarchy side of things.

Kipp

Apple and Skyhook

2008-01-23T16:34:00.000-05:00

My goodness but it's been a long time since i made it out here. I'll blame it on the work...and with good reason.

We've been pretty much heads down for the last several months preparing for what came out last week. As most of you who read this already know (since I've been crowing about it for the last week) --

Apple announced the inclusion of Skyhook's Wireless Positioning Service in the upgrade of the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Steve Jobs announced this during his keynote at Macworld in San Francisco last week.

USA Today
Video podcast
Boston Globe
Links to pr and keynote
Some photos

among others....the best is to see Steve on stage explaining it -- "Isn't that cool? ... That's really cool!"

So, we're happy to be included in the iPhone, a pretty fantastic phone/computing device. It really does change the way you think about the device -- or at least it has for me. Phone seems like such a limiting term...

Well, that's the big news. A number of other things have been going on that are worth mentioning:

- patent 7,305,245 "Location-based services that choose location algorithms based on number of detected access points within range of user device " was issued and includes me as an inventor
- we continue to hire some excellent people into the team (and we're looking for more!)
- the prospects look good for adding WPS into other devices

Personally, I'd like to be able to spend some time focusing on continuing to improve the system for indoor use. There is a lot of research that has been done on indoor positioning systems that we can leverage in considering a large scale indoor positioning system. It has some great challenges that make it hard, but extremely interesting. Not to say that outdoor positioning doesn't also have some great problems as well, but the game changes a bit when you move indoor.

Not a bad start to the year!

Kipp

Moving and Austria

2007-09-17T02:56:00.000-04:00

So we have a new house in Medfield! All of our PODS showed up on Saturday and it looks like most of our stuff made it in it's requisite number of parts, but we'll see when it's all unloaded.

Meanwhile, I took off Saturday to Munich. Arrived on Sunday and had a road trip to Innsbruck, Austria. Lovely town and beautiful weather. I'll try to get some photos online today if possible.

Attending the UbiComp conference for the next couple of days. I've found at least one person that I know from GT (Gregory Abowd) and likely will find a couple others along the way.

Opening keynote is coming up Antonio Calvosa from Ferrari...should go fast :-)

Home

2007-09-14T08:32:00.000-04:00

Nearly there, we close on the house in mere hours (http://www.flickr.com/photos/22868073@N00/sets/72157601442689857/). Looking forward to getting out of our little tiny one room hotel suite!

We should be able to take possession immediately and start evacuating from the hotel. The PODS are scheduled to show up tomorrow, so I'm hoping to be able to get some of the basics (mattresses) out before I fly off to Europe. Yup, me being me, I fly off to Munich tomorrow afternoon to leave Pam to get us moved in. Aren't I sweet?!?

I'll be attending UbiComp which is held in Innsbruck, and then off to Loca2007 which is in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. Back in the States Saturday evening.

Hopefully once back, I'll be able to find all of my things (like the card reader for my camera) and get back into the swing of things.

Work is going great, the kids are liking their school, but I think it'll get even better once we are in our new place and can call it home!

Kipp

Hello Boston!

2007-09-04T06:09:00.000-04:00

Well, the summer has wrought quite the change. Whist pursuing my degree at Georgia Tech, I've been working with a company in Boston, Skyhook Wireless as I've used a lot of their data for my research in wireless positioning and mobile location services.

Well, they closed another round of funding in July and subsequently invited me to join the team. After due consideration, I accepted and the family has thus been thrust into the midst of a move to the Boston area. We're excited by the opportunity, but still trying to get our northeastern legs under us.

The company is located in downtown Boston and we've located a house in Medfield...a 'burb that puts me about 35 minutes of train ride away. The house is rather old -- built in 1751! But it's in good shape and came with 1.5 acres of land, so we're stoked.

The girls started school today and so far so good!

I'll post more info and pictures soon.

Kipp

Visited countries

2007-07-17T16:43:00.000-04:00

I was following a trail though flickr and found this little nugget

create your own visited country map

It's sad...I've only visited 11 countries (4%)...wow I have a lot to do!

At least I've done a bit more in the States, but still only 2/3 of the way there:

Kipp

Network Effect

2007-07-14T13:43:00.000-04:00

So, Metcalfe's Network Effect is kinda cool. I just experienced it recently as fellow from the Scottish Borders. John Connell works for Cisco as their Education Business Development Manager for the Emerging Markets.

John recently spent a brief time in Liberia, hence the connection. Check out blog and his photos. I definitely agree with his thoughts on open source and the role it will play in helping build a platform for education, especially in developing countries. He discusses the OLTP approach, but notes some of the shortcomings especially in countries like Liberia that have effectively zero connectivity outside of the capitol city.

The other critical issue (and one that is even more basic) is access to power. As Russell Southwood of Balancing Act discusses in a recent article on Power, the lack of power makes nearly everything else harder and more expensive. While we (in the US anyway) complain about the cost of gas, we have the luxury of worrying about the cost -- very few people in Liberia have a chance to even experience electric power (other than that produced by the various diesel generators --which mostly produce a lovely odor for people to experience).

Another recent connection thanks to the connected world was an introduction to a member of the parliament in Uganda. I'm hoping to get another perspective on ICT policy development from Edward Baliddawa thanks to an introduction from my friend, Josh Jackson at the University of Alabama, Birmingham.

I hope to extend these connections in the near future!

Kipp

Reflections on Atlanta Motor Speedway

2007-07-07T15:12:00.000-04:00

Kinda cool... one of my photos from a trip to the AMS was included on schmap.com.

The photo:

History of the Internet - 6 minutes

2007-07-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

I was wandering around a great telecom policy blog (CyberTelcom) and stumbled on a video of Ethan Zuckerman ( -- who, btw I spent some time with at a technology for reconciliation conference event last year). The video has Ethan going through the history of the Internet in a very entertaining fashion and getting through some 40 years in just 6 minutes and covering such things as the emoticon and MMORPGs in the process.

Oh, and just to tie it in with an event I'm planning on Net Neutrality, I got to CyberTelecom via the Google Policy Blog talking about the topic...

Kipp

The Left and the Right War

2007-06-25T07:03:00.000-04:00

So, last spring (2006) I wrote a little paper on what I called the 'Left War', looking at the primarily Latin American swing towards the left and it's impact on the US and our international policies.

After pondering it some more, I would say that we are embattled in at least two simultaneous non-traditional war fronts. On the one hand, we have the Left War, battling what we perceive as a socialist revolution that threatens some of our democratic principles. It's clear that the socialist reform is appealing to the public at large -- at least at first. It is unclear how long the legs are on this movement, but as long as it is propped up by petrodollars, I imagine it can have a pretty good run. And Chavez seems to be doing a heck of a job rallying the troops right now, supported by grandpa Fidel and mini-me Evo Morales in Bolivia.

On the other hand we are fighting what I call the 'Right War'. In this case, it's seems to be about who is Right -- in the righteous way. But really it is a battle of the the Extreme Right in which the religious fervor has short circuited common sense and declared that there is only one Right. The Middle East represents the nexus of the battle for us, but you can see the spread around the world and locally.

Africa seems to be off on it's own doing its darndest to itself (well, after the rest of the world mucked with it and then ejected), however, there appears to be a growing strength inside of Africa, but it will take a long time to mature and recover, but there are indications that it can happen. There are many continuing issues, not the least of which is Dakar followed by Somalia and the horn in general. I see the Africa conflicts as related but largely independent of the Left and Right fronts. Certainly you can find connections to both fronts in action, but they appear to be offshoots rather than primary centers.

What's interesting is when these new fronts get together with our old Cold War center -- and you can see this with Chavez meeting with Iran and then going over to the Russia to stock up on weapons, including the latest expectation that he'll buy a few submarines to patrol his oil shipping lanes. So now we have an interesting confluence of the new Left and Right supported by the old guard (Cuba, Russia).

Of course there are a lot of other countries wanting to be in the mix in case we get bored...

Kipp

Minutes as Money

2007-05-28T10:31:00.001-04:00

Since my travels to West Africa, I've definitely been pondering the impact of mobility on not just communications but life in general. With mobile phones as the only means of two-way remote communication (unless you can afford a VSAT installation) in Liberia and the lack of financial infrastructure, I've been looking at how to leverage the mobile infrastructure to make remote banking and remote microfinance a possibility.

This blog from Om Malik discusses how minutes have become currency in some areas -- and how it has become a business for many. The article references an iAfrica.com entitled "Africa's cyber currency".

The idea of using mobiles to reach the unbanked is taking root, but my sense is we are very much at the cusp of understanding the impact, capabilities, and issues -- which is why I find it an intriguing topic for further research.

More Net Neutrality

2007-05-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

I'm working on putting together an event to discuss/debate/argue the merits and issues surrounding Net Neutrality. As such, I'm always interested in well considered arguments as well as those that come from an emotional or political angle. It's a very touchy subject for some, and covers everything from government intervention, to oligopoly market manipulation, to business models, to competition, to politics -- from wired to wireless -- from state to global. It has many facets, so having a good understanding of all of the different elements is helpful.

Here are some recent articles I've read (and I'll inject my editorial note here):

- Political (and largely baseless): Should there be neutrality in the Net? "Because Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have promised special treatment for leftist websites and blogs if net neutrality passes."

- Wireless Net Neutrality: From Tim Wu, pushing the idea of net neutrality and open access towards mobile devices (read: cell providers). Wireless Net Neutrality: Cellular Carterfone on Mobile Networks

- Academic articles and definition: Tim Wu's work

I tend to give weight to the well researched and documented arguments rather than specious non-referenced, emotional/political arguments, but that's just me...

Invisible Web

2007-04-06T07:27:00.000-04:00

Been pondering what the 'Web' is today. Over the last 15 years, it has morphed, grown, changed, evolved into something that is really beyond the web.

As defined in Wikipedia, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web WWW]: The World Wide Web (or simply the "Web") is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.

But to see the 'web' of today, it's much more than that. It has enabled/spawned things like Second Life, blogs, facebook, youtube, mash-ups, etc. etc. etc.

But what are the common themes? Where is it going and where will it be in 10 years? One overriding current in the present/future web (and technology in general) seems to be the consumer aspect. Most innovations are being driven by these massive social and end-user experiments and they gradually seep back into the corporate arena (there are many examples of this from IM to mash-ups to blogs to open source to eBay to wikis to rss to Second Life).

It seems these massive dynamic social networks that are enabled by the web are what's driving a lot of the new technology and behaviors. Perhaps this 'Social Web' is a theme. I think it is something that needs to be understood, and especially in context of enterprise computing in which the slow uptake by 'stodgy' businesses can certainly impact their ability to compete in tomorrow's landscape.

Beyond the social aspects, it seems that we are starting to see the 'structure' of the web (links, pages, protocol, device) disappear with the content and the interactions becoming the dominant visible feature. This is a good thing, when the technology starts to disappear and the functionality becomes the dominant feature. I'd refer to this as the Invisible Web -- it's the infrastructure and all of the various technical underpinnings that enable this new, emergent types of interactions to take place. Note that I use invisible web different from 'dark web'.

So perhaps an evolution of Webs could be:

- World Wide Web
- Data Web
- Transaction Web
- Semantic Web
- Social Web
- Web 2.0
- Invisible Web

With the invisible web, it's not the pages, the links, the data, the network, the device, that are the driving visible features. It's the interconnected, free association, anywhere, anytime type of interaction that is enabled that is the dominant feature.

Kipp

Click FraudWall

2007-01-18T08:14:00.000-05:00

I mentioned Jim Pitkow's Attributor launch recently...well, he's also involved with another company that looks to be addressing something like a $900 million/year problem [1], that of click fraud. The new company, FraudWall Technologies "combines cutting edge science with the aggregation of data and characteristics from networks, search engines, and advertisers into one complete scalable solution". Very interested to learn more about how they are trying to solve the problem. Clearly there are some existing measures in place to deal with this, but they are insufficient to deal with the sophisticated attacks that have been devised (and the low-tech methods like using extremely low labor to thwart automated analysis). I imagine there are a number of heuristics that can be devised to thwart these attacks, hope they have hit on some good ones!

[1] One estimate puts the amount of click fraud at 14%. Since they also estimate that about 40% of the online advertising is click-based and they expect over $16 billion to be spent on online advertising this year, click fraud would account for some $900 million.

GDP of US states versus other countries

2007-01-18T08:09:00.000-05:00

RandomRoger caught this map which equates the GDP of various countries with the GDP of the states in the US. Interesting if not useful...but farily amazing if you think about it much...

Kipp

Web rights

2006-12-18T08:12:00.000-05:00

A buddy of mine, Jim Pitkow and his latest company Attributor was featured in a Wall Street Journal article today talking about the technology these folk have created to scan the web for content as a means for tracking digital rights use/abuse on the web.

This could be huge, with the explosion of images, audio, and video not to mention the massive amounts of other intellectual property published on the web -- being able to track this could be an important piece to the puzzle on how to keep the web semi-organized and 'safe' for all publishers of content.

Having spent some time with DRM systems, I've always been suspect of how such systems can scale and survive on the Net. Some of them have been closed systems that require all things to be under one tent. All of them have suffered from the ability of smart people to 'break' their system, thus rendering them ineffective and setting up an arms race between the DRM and the hacker community.

On the other hand, tracking content on the web has been a challenge due to the massive scale that must be dealt with. A different kind of search engine, in this case dealing with finding and tracking specific pieces of information through, one can imagine, some form of fingerprinting technology that they've developed. A very interesting problem, I hope they've found a way to crack it.

Very cool stuff, and good luck to the Attributor team!

Kipp

Weather anyone?

2006-12-12T07:52:00.000-05:00

From the MIT Technology Review, I caught the personalized weather forecast that IBM's supercomputer is spitting out. The article talks about why this resolution can be beneficial and what some of the downsides are.

Personalized Weather Forecasts by Duncan Graham-Rowe
An IBM supercomputer forecasts weather down to a one-kilometer resolution.

Pretty nifty animations (well, time-lapse jpegs) of tempature, cloud and precipitation, wind and surface conditions.

Now, can you link this to an investment strategy?

Kipp

BCS - Bracket Can Succeed

2006-12-05T13:55:00.000-05:00

What if the BCS had a tournament -- okay, so it's not an original question, but still a good question. Buddy of mine (Greg Mills) sent me this, a hypothetical bracket given the final BCS standings this year. That would be a fun set of games to watch. I don't think any of them are easy, but some have a much higher probability. USC/LSU, the battle of the TLA (three letter acronyms) would be a good game. Oh come on BCS, where's the spirit of adventure? I think this could work....

Oh well, I'm sure Auburn would argue that they should have been in the bracket, but instead they get to play Nebraska!

Kipp

Peter Freeman moving on from NSF

2006-12-01T05:55:00.000-05:00

Our very own (Georgia Tech) Peter Freeman officially announced his departure. This was not a surprise move, term expiration and all. A nice write-up can be found at the CRA site as well as on the NSF site.

He's staying in DC to work for The Washington Advisory Group. This looks to be a high-powered consultancy group that helps various organizations in R&D and higher education, presumably with a perspective towards policy and other strategery work...

Peter was the Dean of CoC the first time I came to Tech and I have fond memories of his tenure here as well as the work he has done at NSF.

Kipp

$100 Laptop or $15 Mobile?

2006-11-03T08:13:00.000-05:00

Motorola's chairman David Brown thinks they will have $15 mobile phones available by 2008. The impact of this is likely to be quite large. As the article states, they think this could add another 100 million people to the wireless world a year.

Another interesting statistic is the one cited from a 'recent study by the London School of Economics' which states that a 10% increase in mobile penetration leads to a .6% increase in GDP (also mentioned back in July in an article on the Economist). After doing some digging (don't you hate it when 'journalists' cite studies but don't actually have any reference to said citation!), I believe they are referring to a paper entitled "The Impact of Telecoms on Economic Growth in Developing Countries" which was written by Leonard Waverman, Meloria Meschi and Melvyn Fuss [1].

Anyway, it looks like the wireless world is benefitting from a number of efforts which include the OLPC $100 laptop and the MOT $15 mobile. Both efforts are good and will have impacts which we can't predict just yet. The $15 price tag sure makes things even more interesting in the developing countries where connectivity is still the major stumbling block even if you were to give away computers. GSM providers have continued to expand their coverage, and with the pre-paid model of network access, they have a huge advantage over any deployment of laptops (unless the laptops come with GSM modems)...

Kipp

[1] Waverman, Meschi and Fuss, The Impact of Telecoms on Economic Growth in Developing Countries, Africa: The Impact of Mobile Phones, Vodafone Policy Paper Series 2 (March 2005)

Tech and elections - GA not doing so well

2006-11-02T12:52:00.000-05:00

CNET just came out with a 'Technology Voter Guide' in which they rate various politians based on their pro/con- technology voting record.

Georgia not only had 2 of the worst performers (Lowest scoring House Democrat - John Barrow @ 25% and Lowest scoring House Replican - Lynn Westmoreland @ 13%), we hve only 2 politicians that scored above 500 (Chambliss @ 60% and Kingston @52.63%).

This puts GA in 38th place as a state...sad...

Kipp

Wireless Meant To Be Free(ish)

2006-10-25T08:14:00.000-04:00

While not really free, the idea behind FON is through sharing your network, you get access to others' networks, thus expanding your ability to be online. This is sort of the seti-at-home model for networks -- by giving up your 'excess/wasted' bandwidth, you can make the world better.

The latest in this push is in San Francisco, they are kicking off a Freedom Friday event to give away these standard Linksys routers with special firmware that provides the ability to offer up your network for others use while still protecting your internal network. In exchange, you can get access to others who are doing the same. I have my FON router, but haven't seen much usage, and haven't found any place where I've been that I could hook up to another FON network, but still hoping they grow!

I think FON should hook up with the actual PHONE companies to expand their smart phone offerings, like what T-Mobile has done with their dual Wi-Fi and Cell Service offering. You can learn more about it at www.theonlyphoneyouneed.com. Now, if you could expand the offering beyond their hot-spots through some kind of connection to FON...

The next few years should be interesting as Wi-Fi not only reaches critical mass, but we come up with more ways to open up private networks to exand the bandwidth and coverage available to users. I did read a paper on the use of open Wi-Fi networks for mobile vehicular access. The bandwidth/throughput is somewhat limited due to the acquisition rate and the mobile nature, but it is possible. Some applications will need to be modified to make it work in a discontinuous mode, but it will happen.

Kipp

Jerircho

2006-10-19T11:51:00.000-04:00

I caught an episode of Jericho recently -- an end of the world TV show focused on a small fictional town in Kansas named Jericho. According to those who edit wikipedia, the best fit for an actual Jericho is Oakley, KS and was chosen for its realtive isolation from major cities.

As I've always said, I grew up in the middle of nowhere -- less than 100 miles from Oakley/Jericho! So I guess I should head back to the farm in the event of a nuclear war, especially since Atlanta was one of the first cities to go in the TV show...

Kipp

Home from Liberia

2006-10-16T06:23:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it home again after a couple weeks in Liberia. The experience was amazing, and the people were incredible. Tere were aspects of the country which were better than expected, and some that were worse. There is an amazing amount of work to be done to get the country fully operational.

The total human capacity in the country is still devastated by the war, 15 years of broken educational systems, broken governmental systems, broken industry -- has left many gaps in the capabilities. It has also devastated any institutional knowledge that was present before the war.

There is an underlying current that seemed to have a push/pull against the international community. A couple of paraphrased quotes:

- The UN is helping, but all of the money goes back out of the country to these high paid consultants
- They want to make the country in their likeness (e.g. western)
- The WorldBank is trying to impose their ideas on us, but they don't understand the situation (e.g. we're different)
- We should ban export of raw materials (even go so far as to follow Bolivia's lead and nationalize resources)
- We want foreign investment and competition, but 'need' state owned entities with special priveleges (e.g. telecom, power, media)

There is also a sense of lost opportunity, especially noticeable in the telecom sector. The country missed several opportunities during the last decade with resepct to spectrum licensing and it seems they want to somehow turn back the clock to recoup those lost revenues. But going back is not the path forward. Dwelling on the past way of doing things, the misssed opprotunities, will only exacerbate the problem.

We need to some fresh thinking -- if you are building a country with a fresh start, what should you do? Unfortunately, as it currently sits, it isn't a fresh start, there is baggage all around that are left overs. Nonetheless, it is an opportunity to set things on a path forward not backwards. How should a country handle it's raw resources? How should the country attract foreign investment? How should the country build it's educational system? These and many more questions can be looked at with a fresh perspective.

The Liberian diaspora have an important role to play. As a cross between foreign investment and local investment, they are likely to be more able to understand and take the risks needed to invest in the country. They can assimilate ideas from other regions and apply them to the context of Liberia. They can provide anchors for other investments. But, they also must force out the culture of corruption and ensure that they do not contribute to the continuation of bribery and cronyism that can leave the country in a state of decay.

According to many who have been working in Liberia over the last several years, it has come a long way from the bottom. This may be true, but there is still a long way to go to get the country truly operational. I hope our work can contribute towards some of that progress by helping the government embrace technology as a lever for many of the other sectors that are being built/rebuilt.

Kipp

View from the top

2006-10-12T16:08:00.000-04:00

View from the top
Originally uploaded by kippster.

There used to be a 5 star hotel up here, but no more. From here, everything looks quite normal. But as you've seen, and as we've experienced, it's far from normal, but not as bad as some would have you believe.

The Masonic Temple, which is quite impressive even in it's post-war state, is also located up here. The building is actively used by the lodge members here (one of which which we met).

So long from my last full day here, tomorrow should be bit more calm with only one meeting before flying out....

Kipp

Boys will be boys

2006-10-11T09:07:00.000-04:00

CIMG2020.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Edem and I spent part of the afternoon walking between meetings. As we were walking by, these boys had discovered a tire and were working on taking it someplace.

Today, it's rainy. Started raining last night, and hasn't let up -- some great thunderstorms this morning and there is flooding around the city. But we don't let that slow us down, 5 meetings on the docket today, but so far tomorrow looks light with only 2 so far.

Our Internet connection at the compound was not working, so I'm working from an Internet cafe -- about $1.20 USD for 30 minutes of time, but the connectivity is pretty darn good (278kbps down with 32 kbps up -- Vital Technology is the name of the place).

It's amazingly low price considering what they have to go through to get access here. All of the equipment is expensive and taxed rather heavily. The license fees for VSAT add to the burden as does the cost of burning diesel to keep the power going. Satellite bandwidth is just plain expensive.

The mobile market is doing very well here, with some providers now offering GPRS, others with money transfers, and others offering fixed wireless Internet access.

Kipp

Hot spot

2006-10-09T16:36:00.000-04:00

Just to make sure I wasn't an entire weanie with respect to the weather, it really is quite warm here. According to one report (boston.com), while the temperature was only 29 degrees celcius (about 84 farenheit), with the humidty running at 87%, the 'RealFeel' temperature is about 99 degrees F.

Kipp

Laundry Day

2006-10-09T16:10:00.000-04:00

Laundry Day
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Well, most days are laundry days around here. Most people don't have electricity, so laundry along with a lot of other things involves manual labor.

For a country just slightly larger than Tennessee [1] and a population of somewhere around 3 million (about half as many as Tennessee [2]), they sure do know how to create big problems! Without power (excepting for a small area around the Presidential complex which is served by a grid), the only power is via generators (and boy does the smell of burning diesel add to the joy of the sound of those generators). Of course, all fuel has to be imported, so fuel here is about $3/gallon in the city, going up to around $5/gallon in the bush.

I heard some stats regarding the cost of kvh here, but I'd probably get them wrong if I put them here...suffice it to say, the cost per kvh is a lot higher here than in most places. Very few buisiness are 24 hour, even most of the radio stations are run on a 2-shift block so as not to burn diesel during the non-peak listening times.

Without consistent electricity, the act of preserving foods is dealt a blow. This limits the available options for sustenance. Speaking of sustenance, rice is a huge thing here, and rice is expensive ($32/bag, which apparently is normally around $19). There, at least in the past, and perhaps presently, some kind of monopoly on rice production/importation. This apparently doesn't help reduce the price that people end up paying -- go figure!

The roads are torn up, from the war and general lack of repair capability. I'm sure the UN tanks rolling around on the roads don't help (I actually got to witness one of these patrols the other night as we were heading home from Ellen's place -- a bit of surprise to see a couple of tanks roll by -- I was so enthralled with watching, I forgot to grab my camera!). the repairs that they do, don't last long due to the heavy rains, plus I think the equipment they use to patch the roads are not the most up-to-date. (see pic.).

The state of the roads causes what almost appears to be a video game style of driving, weaving around both sides of the road to avoid dropping a wheel in the potholes. Meanwhile the pedestrians are in their own game, playing a version of frogger trying to get across the road...

And that's just the beginning...

[1] https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/print/li.html
[2] http://www.npg.org/states/tn.htm

New friends

2006-10-08T08:32:00.000-04:00

New friends
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Ellen (our host here) invited us, her team, and some of the folk from the Energy Forum over for a dinner party last night. Her team has been working 24x7 to get everything ready for what turned out to be an extremely well attended conference on Energy in Liberia. We'll see what comes out, but this certainly should kick up the activity -- but it still looks like it is up to the government to clean up it's legal and regulatory framework and figure out what they really want to do before the investors are going to be willing to step in.

There are some similarities between the energy and telecom industry regarding the legal, regulatory, and investment environment. Transparency and clarity are needed in order to move things forward.

Anyway, we spent Friday in meetings with USAID, Comium (mobile provider that was incredibly unhelpful), Search For a Common Ground (regarding community radio) and some folk from the Carter Center. We were able to gather a good bit of information on the industry and some of the policy issues. As I mentioned above, Comium was completely closed and would not discuss anything.

Saturday was some work around the office here, with Edem trying to get his crew ready to do the personal survey work. I spent some time playing around with Google Earth and showing some of the folk at Genesis a few geographic details (like where the heck is Nebraska!).

We closed the work day with an excellent meeting with Boutheina from the World Bank. Great stuff, and I think they are doing some incredible work here and elsewhere -- she was off to Freetown today to mark the first engagement with the Telecom sector in Sierra Leone. Good luck on that one!

I was jonesing for some college football yesterday -- caught a few early scores online while hanging out at the Mamba Point Hotel, but just not quite the same. At least the Huskers won (sorry about the Tigers Greg).

Today is a day to catch up on my notes and get the week nailed down. Should be pretty quite, and it looks like the rain may have moved on for the day or at least the moment.

Kipp

Scrubby time

2006-10-06T18:57:00.000-04:00

Scrubby time
Originally uploaded by kippster.

This was one unhappy little boy! Getting clean is no fun!

I was sitting in the office when I heard him crying, looked up and just had to snap the shot...

I'm rather tired now after a long day filled with meetings. I'll fill you in on it tomorrow.

Kipp

Monrovia in B&W

2006-10-05T08:23:00.000-04:00

Monrovia in B&W
Originally uploaded by kippster.

It seemed like a good day to switch to black and white. The cloud cover made for some soft light but stil plenty of contrast (in more ways than one).

I made a bonehead move today and ended up at the wrong building for a meeting this morning. Doh! Had to apologize profusely and reschedule for Monday. I'm a dork...

I did get a chance to see more of downtown Monrovia. We stopped by the National Engergy Stakeholders' Forum which is being sponsored by USAID and all of the logistics are being done by our host here, Genesis. Some 350 participants from all over are coming with the event being kicked off and closed by the President.

Speaking of electricity, I spoke with one gentleman who spends some $30 a day on fuel for his generators. Not too many people can afford that around here, so there are a lot of places without. The generator in our compound provides good power, but the noise is deafening, especially since the windows are open due to no a/c. But, not complaining, have electricity and Internet connectivity which is pretty darn good.

Kipp

Brain Gain

2006-10-05T04:32:00.000-04:00

This article, Liberia's elites leave American comforts for war-torn home in the Christian Science Monitor echoes what I have witnessed, both on the trip over, and since I've arrived.

There is a very noticeable number of highly trained and skilled professionals coming and staying in Liberia. Many that I met on the trip over are on 'exploratory' missions, but others have decided this is where they want to be. Take my hosts for example, Genesis, they have some massive brain power -- executives from wall street, Goldman Sachs, E&Y, etc. that have all come back and made this their home again. With their return they bring not only vast experience, but a means to help build the local capacity by training and educating those they work with.

These are very positive currents, but there is always this undercurrent that is present, especially in an area which lacks the institutional capability to fully police itself. The temptations and opportunities for unethical behavior abound, with both international and locals looking for opportunities to take advantage of the situation.

Kipp

Last one for today...

2006-10-04T16:15:00.000-04:00

The sun has set over here, but back home, there's still time in the day to play!

Wednesday

Another good ‘n warm night of sleeping. No a/c, but a nice breeze going through. Nice thing was, had water in the morning, so got a nice cold shower to wake me up!

Had several meetings today, the chairman of the Liberian Telecommunications Authority, Dr. Vandi was gracious and took a lot of time out of his day to help us understand the process, the role of LTA, some of the needs, issues and challenges that he sees ahead.

After that, we spent some time with the General Manager of LiberCell, one of 4 mobile providers in Liberia. For a population of some 3 million, 4 providers is quite a few!

Mr. Alawie was also very gracious and hosted Edem and I while we discussed the capabilities and plans for LiberCell in Liberia. Very interesting business, especially given the level of competition.

An interesting side note regarding the effect of this competition. The model of cell phones is quite a bit different here than most people, say, in the US look at cell phones (e.g. mobiles). Here, people actually buy a phone (without subsidization from the service providers). Because they do this, the phones are unlocked, i.e. they work with any service provider given the right SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card. What appears to happen for some, is they will buy a SIM card from each provider (~$5 each). Then, they wait around for some kind of special on minutes from one of the providers and then stock up….I tell you…

Speaking of locked phones, we went downtown to try to get Edem’s t-mobile phone unlocked….$95 to get it unlocked! Nuts I tell you. Of course it was only $25 to get my cingular phone unlocked (which, btw, they were supposed to have emailed me the code last week, but it still hasn’t arrived….grrr). We got a couple waters and headed back to the office…

Set up a few more meetings, try to get organized for tomorrow, struggle with the bandwidth, and that should about do it for the day!

Images of Monrovia

2006-10-04T15:06:00.000-04:00

Here are a few shots from around Monrovia, you can catch more of them on my flickr account.

Connectivity in Monrovia

2006-10-04T14:24:00.000-04:00

So, I’m getting about 43Kbps download with 16Kbps upload – which would explain why I only uploaded a few photos and then used a smaller version of them…

kipp-jones-powerbook-g4-78:~ kippster$ ping www.yahoo.com
PING www.yahoo-ht2.akadns.net (209.73.186.238): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 209.73.186.238: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=742.164 ms
64 bytes from 209.73.186.238: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=3041.214 ms
64 bytes from 209.73.186.238: icmp_seq=9 ttl=53 time=750.923 ms
64 bytes from 209.73.186.238: icmp_seq=10 ttl=53 time=700.803 ms
64 bytes from 209.73.186.238: icmp_seq=11 ttl=53 time=1240.628 ms

So, a bit tough, but better than being disconnected!

Kipp

Tuesday in Monrovia - Energy and Telco

2006-10-04T14:16:00.000-04:00

It’s now October 3 – After a nice little dinner and a drink last night, I was the first occupant of the newly renovated Chateau De La Genesis. The AC wasn’t hooked up, so I hope my Deet was protecting me as I had to have some air in the room. The location is pretty amazing (see photos if you don’t believe me). They’ve done a lot to restore this set of buildings, the previous occupants, apparently soldiers, had subdivided every room into tiny rooms. As you can see, from the pics, the area around the compound is still in a bit of disrepair. With unemployment running at around 85%, you can understand why.

I awoke early and had a chance to snap some photos as the sun was coming up. The ocean is some 50 m away, so I slept last night to the sound of the waves crashing. Very pleasant, but I’m just not used to it! That, and every time I had an itch I couldn’t help but think about mosquitoes…

This morning met a nice young lady who is a junior at the United Methodist University, majoring in accounting with a minor in economics. She is from Liberia, but spent a number of years in Nigeria (near Lagos) during the war. She’s very optimistic but knows it will take some time to rebuild the country. She hopes to be able to pursue a graduate degree overseas and be able to come back and use what she learned to help out.

I also spent some time with Abraham, a young man who is in networking – primarily sounds like he deals with satellite networks. As with a lot of people, he also spent some time elsewhere during the war and is back.

Both Abraham and Joisei(sp?) are very interested in technology. I ran my Phonopoly idea past them and they seemed genuinely interested. There are times where having access to an account of some kind would be very useful. For example with the universities, many web sites require some type of account. It truly is amazing how prevalent the mobile phones are. They confirmed this, noting that they use them for both voice and texting.

Phones here are not cheap since the phone companies don’t subsidize them. This in turn helps propagate the cell phone thievery. Sam (the economist fellow) mentioned that it is the number 1 item for theft in the country. The young lady showed me a scar (it was on her neck before you ask!) where a thug had cut her to get her cell phone.

Anyway, the generator isn’t on yet, sometime during the night it stopped. I’m on my second battery so I have a bit of time left. My cell phone, however is on it’s last leg – stupid charger doesn’t seem to be working, and my other phone *still* isn’t unlocked! And my IP phone won’t work until they get the network back alive….

Now, preparing for a press conference on Energy. Met a gentleman, Will James from IRG in DC. He’s an energy lawyer. I promised him to send him an article on the Dark Land, about the forgotten land of Africa. Will has a slide of the nighttime view of the earth.

Also met Dunstan L. D. Maculey, the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC). He spent a number of years in Atlanta (circa 95) and led the Liberian delegation at the Centenial Olympics.

A discussion ensued about the upcoming National Forum. Hydro power (~60%) was the key generator pre-war power source (413 Megawatts ish). Now they have about 4 Megawatts. Rural electrification has always been an issue in Liberia. Petroleum production stopped many years ago. 2004 Energy workshop came out with some options. Issues to tackle include:
1) sector reform and restructuring – liberalized with competition
2) market development – measures to establish market structure within electricity and petro subsectors
3) increase access to rural – renewable energy resources
4) establish independent regulatory bodies
5) strengthen legal and regulatory framework

Several members of the press followed up the speeches with some hard questions about implementation, not just policy. The answers were a mix of ‘we’ll try’ and ‘we know’ about both the perception and the reality of the scorecard on implementation. Pledges to do better…

Sam Jackson drove me to the National Investment Commission building. I’m to meet with Ben Wolo (head of LTC) who will also be meeting with LTA and World Bank.

I was able to meet with Ben Wolo of the LTC briefly. I was more of a fly on the wall during a discussion between LTC, LTA, and World Bank. I can’t say more, but I was appreciative of the chance to participate.

I then made my way over to visit with Zotowan Titus, the Assistant Minister of Telecom. The Ministry of Post and Telecommunications building has a dual image…many areas are in disrepair, yet the offices are in good shape albeit spread around on several levels. Unfortunately, the office does not have Internet access – but I was thoroughly debriefed by Mr. Titus who graciously walked me through the policy process as well as the process by which the provisional government had enacted certain bills.

Back to the office, a number of scheduling calls and debriefs, some note taking, then to a quick dinner and back to bed….

A day on the road

2006-10-04T14:12:00.000-04:00

Monday

JB stopped by to say hi, Ellen will be stopping by at 10:00 to pick me up and head to the office. Eager to get going…

Oh, and my pathetic GPS (Teletype SBT-1000) unit seems quite worthless. I was unable to get a fix in Brussels, at the airport in Monrovia or at my hotel room. I’ll try outside, but not holding my breath.

Maintained my isolation, reviewing the current proposals for ICT policy in Liberia and writing a document on Phonopoly – a means to transfer money via mobile phones. It appears upon review that this really could be a way to open the cash only economy up to a new form of monetary transactions.

I am supposed to be picked up now by JB around 1PM…

Well, JB didn’t end up picking me up, rather Saey came and gathered me up around 1PM. After checking out, we made about a 15 minute drive up the main road to Genesis. The main road is in pretty bad shape, very large areas where traffic slows to a craw as people try to weave around the minefield of potholes. The destruction from the war is present everywhere you look.

The Genesis compound is near the presidential and other government offices. Since the fire in the Presidential compound, the President has been staying in a different building, I think it is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.

I spent the rest of the afternoon meeting the rest of the team: Sam Jackson an economist with a long list of accomplishments, Mr. Woods who has been spearheading the OSIWA project, Ellen Crayton the owner and the brains behind Genesis who also has an impressive background of accomplishments.

There is some buzz around, as the group is very involved in a National Oil & Energy Stakeholders Forum later this week. This is a pretty big deal as they are working on various aspects of the energy issue including the possibility of oil along the coast.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on into the evening establishing contact with the various communications service providers and government officials. After about 40 calls, had several meetings scheduled and several call backs to make to confirm a time. The key this week is getting to as many of the providers and government people as possible.

Next week, we are working on putting together a workshop that brings together representatives from various sectors of the economy to discuss ICT. We think this will be the most effective way to get information from a broad spectrum of the economy.

The realities

2006-10-03T15:58:00.000-04:00

CIMG1815.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

This gives a view out the front of the Genesis compound. It provides a bit more view into the devestation that the years of war have had on the country -- a local figure putting unemployment at 85%...

The possibilities

2006-10-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

CIMG1793.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

The great view from the Genesis compound. This is a view out of the room I'm staying in.

The journey continues

2006-10-03T15:33:00.000-04:00

10/1

Okay, continuing day 2, I spent the morning doing some more readings for the qualifiers. This to add a bit of variety to my reading diet of ‘The Travler’ by John Twelve Hawks and a paper on spectrum allocation…you really wish you were me don’t you?!?

I did run into Boutheina (World Bank), who is on her way to work with the gov’t of Liberia on the telecom act and then to Sierra Leone to work with their government as well. It is her team’s work that we are building on for this Liberian project and I owe a lot of thanks to both her and Judith Hollerstein for the generous sharing of their contacts.

The trip to Monrovia was very interesting. I ended up sitting next to a gentleman, Roland who works for the UN. He’s responsible for the UN fueling stations (some 40+ of them) in Liberia – for land and air vehicles. He had a lot to say about the UN, the countries in which he had been stationed (Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Kuwait…) and his home country of Austria. A quite vocal fellow with a passion for Italian cars, he described how he seems to have a knack for building and fixing things interspersed with a couple of choice curse words and an ‘I tell you what…” in an Austrian accent. In particular his descriptions of some of the waste within the UN machine (both by the bureaucracy as well as by individual and group corrupt behavior of graft and theft of UN resources. I could give you a pretty good history of his life and a fairly detailed description of his favorite things to do (fish) and dislikes (lazy bleeps).

We had a short stop in Freetown, Sierra Leone to pick up and drop off some passengers. I snapped a couple of pictures (but received a good wag of the finger by the flight attendant – apparently my blurry pictures of the airport represent a security threat). I also had a chance to meet Jeff, another UN person who contracts for the UNDP (food). He goes into locations and devises security mechanisms and methods to protect the food chain. He also has done stints all around the world, recently coming from a couple months in Bangladesh – a place that he says is the worst place he has been with respect to quality of life and prospects for improvement. A very interesting fellow, one who just exuded a confidence and had such a commanding voice that you just felt comfortable hanging around him.

There seems to be a lack of consistent understanding of what happens with the technology when the UN retreats. Does it stay or does it go? How much stays and is there training on the use of it? According to Roland, it all goes when the UN leaves, the radios, the towers, the equipment, but Jeff had another take, stating that it all stays...

We then made a quick jaunt from Freetown to Monrovia (about 1 hour/ 700 km). The airport in Monrovia iss minimalist, the main terminal had been destroyed by the war, so all people traffic now goes through the freight terminal (as described by a local a bit later in my day). The process of going through security was quite painless and pretty well organized (especially if you go back to my nightmarish experience in ATL!).

I was able to retrieve my checked bag, but since I didn’t have my luggage tag (doh!), I had to politely beg a lady to let me have my bag. But then, I borrowed Roland’s phone (I didn’t have a local sim just yet) and called my driver who was supposed to meet me at the airport. Well, JB had suffered a vehicular fan belt failure and was 45 minutes away from the airport.

Talk about a stir. There is no place in the airport itself to wait – get your bags and out the door. I talked to one of the ‘workers’, and he had me stand by the terminal. Well, that worked for a bit, until somebody else spotted me and wanted me to move. I informed them that my driver was on the way, so they said okay…until somebody else noticed me and then we all moved down to the edge of the airport building. There is an interesting mix of UN folk on the perimeter, with officers and airport security mixing with what I can only assume are non-employed ‘helpers’. After about 30 minutes of this, I had a veritable army of people surrounding me, 4 officers and a couple of others who were helping get my phone working and get back in touch with JB, as they seemed more worried about me being there than I did. JB finally showed up and I paid $20 for my police escort….

But, we still had to wait for Edem to show up. We then parked and hung out in an outbuilding by the airport for a couple of hours, again attracting a bit of a crowd again. About the time Edem’s flight was arriving, we get a call. He had been delayed and was still in the states and was going to try to make it to Liberia by Monday night…I’m not sure it’ll happen, but good luck!

While hanging outside the airport, I was introduced to the Deputy Director of the Ministry of Commerce, Pete Norman. He was on his way to Miami. Like many here, Pete is a recent returnee to Liberia who appear to be coming back with dual goals. 1) to improve their homeland and help out where they can, and 2) participate in what many see as a huge opportunity for personal gain.

Regarding commerce, it appears the Rice Scandal is weighing heavy on people. My take on this, and apologies if I get it wrong, is the Lebanese (and one family in particular) have maintained a monopoly on the rice industry in Liberia for 3 generations. This issue has become a major problem, and sounds like it has caused several months of delay in the process to apply for WTO membership. Frustration at the speed with which change is taking place can be felt by some folk such as Pete who is struggling to get the momentum going in the right direction.

I also learned that there are about 3 radio stations, Star, Free (UN?) and some other one. The Free station operates 24 hours and, at least according to one youngster, doles out accurate information about events.

So around 10:30, JB and I hop in the 157,000 mile Trooper for the 70 minute ride back to the city. The road at times was in great shape, and at other times, you could lose your axle in the washed out pot holes. People were walking along the dark street, and periodically, there would be some type of shop or stand that had a gathering.

And to continue the adventure, our original plan of staying at the Genisis facilities was modified and I’m now at the Royal Hotel room 303 for the evening. Tomorrow, we’ll get a kick on things and get our plan mapped out for the duration of my stay…

Stay tuned for some pictures...

Kipp

Amsterdam and the Internet

2006-10-01T03:34:00.000-04:00

Caught this article on the Internet exchange in Amersterdam ( on Yahoo). The AMS-IX is the world's busiest Internet exchange according to the article. It also boasts that it is the world's first mobile Internet peering point -- I wonder what exactly they mean by that.

According to the home page "the 5 minute average high of the aggregate traffic now reaches 120 Gbps for a total of 234 members" which is pretty impressive.

This is another take on the still raging Net Neutrality issue, or at least they work it into the story, even quoting the venerable Tim BL in the process.

Kipp

The Journey begins

2006-10-01T03:24:00.000-04:00

Saturday, noontime arrive at ATL Hartsfield airport for a 2:45PM flight out to Washington Dulles. Silly me, my checked luggage came in at over 50 pounds (brought some extra gear, a veritable electronics store of goods including a couple of phones, a VoIP phone, a wireless network, gps, palm, computer, camera…and all associated power accessories). After waiting in line for 45 minutes and reshuffling the load, was all checked in. Another 45 minutes in the security line and I barely made it onto the flight.

Established my first Liberian contact while on the flight. James, an electrical engineer by training and now a software developer for Turner was sitting next to me. 12 years since he’s been back to Liberia.

We reach Dulles with no problems, where I meet a couple other Liberians who are returning – another electrical engineer from Charlotte that is going back after 12 years in the States. I speak with several others and there does appear to be a theme – after the long years of the war, people are very optimistic about the opportunities back home. Several of their relatives have established or are in process of establishing some type of business. They are looking at all types of business – sports, Internet, investigative agencies, construction, education…it appears like a gold rush of a fashion.

Flight from Dulles to Brussels was a long one…thanks to great flight booking skills, I had the middle of the middle on the big ol’ plane. Luckily I was between a couple of young ladies on their way to Brussels for a marketing summit – they and a couple of their colleagues from eBay were headed over for the week.

Arrive in Brussels around 7:30AM Sunday morning, flight out at 11:15. I think I spotted Boutheina in a check-in line, but was too far back to make contact…I’m sure I’ll catch up with her soon.

Used the airport pay for Internet service (10euro for 1 hour). 1516 kbps download from DC, with a 313kbps upload speed…not too shabby!

We Feel Fine

2006-09-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

Speaking of making you happy, check out what they've done with blog mining over at WeFeelFine.

For over a year, they have been mining blogs to find how people are feeling. But that's not all, as they gather the 'feelings' they also snag as much about the location, weather, person blogging, gender, age -- and then do a cool visualization with a self-organizing particle system....

You just gotta check it out!

Kipp

Sunsets

2006-09-25T21:40:00.000-04:00

Sunsets
Originally uploaded by kippster.

As reported in 'Good Morning Silicon Valley' by John Paczkowski, Despair: When silent suffering isn't enough

Despair.com which launched in 1998 to combat the motivational art infestation, has provided a new homework avoiding tool.

It just makes you happy!

Kipp

Johnsons

2006-09-16T07:48:00.000-04:00

Wired
Originally uploaded by kippster.

We recently lost a couple of great friends and some of the best people you'd ever meet. My friend's parents from back home (Nebraska/Kansas) passed away -- Viron and Christa Johnson -- we'll miss them.

Very sad and tragic.

Of course these events are the only time groups of people get back together, so I did get to see my Bro and old man while I was there. I also took the opportunity to get a couple of photos since it was such a beautiful fall like day. These photos were taken as I drove across Kansas and into Nebraska.

This one is interesting -- wireless is everywhere!

And this just seems appropriate for the event...

Liberia President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf

2006-09-16T07:35:00.000-04:00

President Johnson-Sirleaf
Originally uploaded by kippster.

I'm involved in a project that is focused on figuring out ICT's role in the post-conflict rebuilding of Liberia. There is a lot to be done, and I'm excited to have a chance to visit Monrovia in several weeks.

Through much effort on Mike Best's part, we were able to host the President of Liberia recently on Tech's campus. She has a daunting task ahead of her, but it was inspiring to hear her talk about the opportunities for a fresh start and moving the country forward.

This was one of the first time she has given a speech focused on ICT's role in development in Liberia. After the public event, we were able to spend some time at lunch with her and her staff.

Then came a working meeting with a number of agencies, private entities, and academia to try to layout some of the issues and roles that the different parties can/should play in Liberia.

For my part, I'm hoping to help establish a baseline understanding of the current capabilities and the beginnings of a needs assessment and policy roadmap.

Some additional information about her visit made it online:

AJC
College of Computing (where I actually get a mention!)
mp3 of the President's speech (14.3MB)
AllAfrica coverage

Google in ATL

2006-08-14T17:59:00.000-04:00

I caught this on Google's blog and thought folk might have an
interest in knowing about the growth of Google's presence in Atlanta.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/google-in-atl.html

Kipp

Liberia and the world

2006-07-27T10:45:00.000-04:00

I may be working on a project to map the ICT infrastructure in Liberia this fall. Some of my friends and family were asking a bit about Liberia. It has quite the storied past and is now trying to work its way out of a 14 year civil war that pretty much devastated all aspects of the country. The following is a bit of info that I dug up due to our discussion:

I caught a recent article on electricity in the capital of Liberia: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/liberia_electricity_dc

Also a bit of background if you are interested... https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/li.html

And for Pammy (who asked if we were to evenly redistribute the income in the world to each man, woman and child, what would the averarge income be?), the world currently has an estimated 6,530,757,077 people (http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html). In 2004, the world GPD (Gross Domestic Product) was estimated at $51,410,000,000,000 (http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_2004_0.html) leading me to believe that an average per capita for each person in the world would be about $7,871.98.

So, on average, a family of 4 would bring in $31,487/year...of course this is all based on GDP which is not necessarily the full picture regarding income, but since I'm no economist I use it here as an approximate proxy.

What is interesting is about 1/5 of the world's population lives on less than $1/day (considered extreme poverty) -- about 1.1 billion people (http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/6 and http://devdata.worldbank.org/wdi2005/Section1_1_1.htm). Good news is, they estimate this number will be down to around 858 million by 2015...

If we take the 1/5 of the population out of the the equation (and their $1/day), the remaining 4/5 take in about $9,748.73 -- about $26.71 per day per person...

Hope this clears up all of your questions for the day!

Kipp

One MegaBit Per Child/Community

2006-07-27T09:34:00.000-04:00

It appears that the One Laptop Per Child (aka $100 laptop) continues to push forward. I think it is a great idea and the effort is likely to push the limits of technology and costs to a point where it will at least become more accessible.

However I tend to agree with the comments on ZDNet (http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39257951,00.htm) regrading the fact that it's not necessarily the best place to start. I'm starting to get a better understanding of the dynamics, and adding a hand crank to a laptop will not solve the issues for everybody who wants a laptop. As the author notes, "one power socket per village and one megabit per community are much surer foundations for building a future."

Infrastructure is stil a critical issue in making these devices useful, and while the FAQ on OLPC (http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html) declares:

What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.

Good thought, and I think mesh networks will play an important role -- necessary but insufficient. These islands of mesh-pods still need to make it to the outside world. and while local networks without international connectivity can have some interesting applications, I don't think it is sufficient to have only local access without full Internet connectivity.

Concurrent with the deployment of devices, we need deployment of network infrastructure and power. How far can wireless mesh networks take the developing world? Is the premise that we need power and network infrastructure true? What density of deployment is needed for the mesh network to become fully connected? Is it even feasible and what happens to people until it does happen?

I think there's a lot more work to do than relying on the fact that mesh-networking between the laptops will solve it...

Kipp

FON_ wifi

2006-07-17T14:14:00.000-04:00

CIMG1493.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

I'm wondering if this is the proper configuration for a network -- I'm pretty sure the interference is better if you stack all 3 routers together, right?

So I received my $5 (actually something like $13) Linksys router from FON today (it's the one on top with the cool sticker). It's a standard Linksys WRT54GS router with the special FON firmware pre-installed.

Just a couple of details from my 15 minutes of installation:

- SSID: FON_linksys
- Channel: 6

The router was shipped from FON US INC, 1001 Technology Way, LIbertyvill, IL 60048.

I have earned nothing as yet, but I'll be watching closely. I also found out you can change your splash screen, even sending incoming users to a different web site.

I also updated my SSID, but it hasn't updated my router just yet...We should be able to see how many FON routers are out there, it appears that you can't change the FON_ prefix on the SSID...in fact, it appears that we only have 34 FON APs in our database right now. There are several other self named fon aps, these are likely named by somebody who downloaded and installed the firmware on their own box, but that's just a guess.

Right now, we are showing .0003% of the access points are FON, however the frequency of them is beginning to increase.

I'll keep playing with it and see what it looks like as somebody else..

UPDATE: Using the wife's computer, I connected to the FON network (after I rebooted the router, it now shows up as FON_kippster). The modified splash screen shows up whereby I can navigate to the one URL that I was able to specify in the FON interface. This provides some information to a user, even if they don't have/want a FON account. I had given my wife a guest account, so using that infromation, I logged in and was able to surf enough to verify that it really does work.

I was unable to view any other network resources once connected to the FON network, which is a good thing!

Atlanta Wifi

2006-07-11T10:14:00.000-04:00

atl_20060711
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Atlanta recently published their RFP for a metro-scale broadband wireless network.

This is a very extensive RFP and I'm eagerly watching what and who comes out to respond.

In the meantime, this is a look at the existing wifi infrastructure in Atlanta. This image shows the over 100,000 public/private wifi access points that exist (and are mapped) in the ATL region.

As part of my WhatWhereWi project, I'm exploring how this infastructure is evolving.

Kipp

Last resort

2006-07-11T08:52:00.000-04:00

In the vein of competition and changing landscape for networks, I caught an article in the AJC this morning (http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/0711bizbellsouth.html) that discusses how BellSouth is attempting to get out of its obligations as 'provider of last resort'.

According to the article, the encumbent provider currently has a responsibility to provide service to any one who wants it regardless of the economic viability of said service. This, I believe, is intended to ensure universal coverage and not 'cherry picking' service to the wealthy. But with the increase in competition for these 'cherries' BellSouth is finding it may not have the advantages it once enjoyed and now has to deal with other companies that may not have the last resort encumberance.

BellSouth is particularly fighting as new developments (apartments, planned cities, 'hoods, etc.) are at the forefront of the battle for new subscribers and developers are negotiating up front deals for their developments. If BellSouth doesn't become the prefered provider, it is arguing that it shouldn't have the last resort requirement in that area.

It appears that their first line of attack has been to throw a bit of FUD directly at the developers, as the article notes regarding one letter sent out by BellSouth: "Please be aware that the presence of these types of arrangements with alternate communications providers or infrastructure providers may affect BellSouth's provision of service."

Apparently a law in Florida (supported by BellSouth) passed this year that provides an out for the encumbent in certain circumstances. I'd bet we'll see more of these bills being introduced around the states in the near future...

Kipp

FON vs Phone

2006-07-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

I've been continuing to analyze the skyhook data, looking at the existing US wifi infrastructure to see what else could be done with it, what problems it represents, how it could be better, what issues might it represent (security, privacy, etc.) and how we could use the technology to reach ever more people.

One company that is utilizing this infrastructure is FON (www.fon.com), a Spanish company that has set out to change the way our existing (and growing) wifi networks provide access by building a community that shares their wifi connections. They now state that they have over 68,000 'foneros' -- people who have enabled their wifi routers (either upgraded their firmware or purchased a fon router). 68,000, not a bad start, but definitely on the right track.

Now, there are issues with their plan, but it could work. In fact this was something that was contemplated by a colleague of mine several years ago, but we couldn't see a way to get past the ISPs in the US -- It looks like it was easier to start in Europe and move into the US than to start here -- that or they just have bigger Euros than we did...

But clearly there is a lot of infrastructure that is being underutliized -- I think of this similar to the SETI@Home effort -- how to put to use all of those wasted bandwidths, only in this case the idea is if you give a little, you get a little, rather than just for the sake of finding errant signals in the sky. Hmm...I guess it is more similar than I thought, as both are looking for particular signals...okay that may be a stretch....

Nonetheless, I find it interesting to think about the various wifi networks that we are building -- home, shared, municipal, community, business, region, public transport, airport, etc. and how all of these are related and/or different. If we were going to do it from scratch, is this really the way we would do it? Is there a better way? What would it look like? And where should we (personal, community, metro, international) be investing to provide better access to everybody?

Getting back to FON, should this mode of operation be promoted or controlled? Currently, it is likely against all ISP providers' rules to actually join FON and open your DSL or other broadband connection to 'outsiders'. Most agreements forbid such behavior (remember when they specified a single computer -- and even what type of computer could be connected to the network?!? My first cable modem provider (Cablevision) had some silly notion along those lines back in '98).

How should metro-scale wifi networks be regulated, promoted, stopped, changed, directed? What is going to happen with our spectrum and how do these millions of APs affect each other. At what density do they detract from service? How do we know if an area is ready for metro-scale wifi networks? What applications will drive adoption? How does wifi help those who can't afford a computer? How does WiMAX play with wifi? How does/should the wifi/cellular relationship play out?

And that's just a couple of questions that are bouncing around. Maybe I'll continue this with a bit more on the technical side next...

Kipp

30 mile WiMax

2006-06-19T07:04:00.000-04:00

Wi-SKY Networks and Proxim Wireless Achieve WiMAX Connections With Vessels at Sea and in Air (http://www.bbwexchange.com/publications/page1423-154340.asp)

According to this article, they've been able to achieve continuous operation over distances up to 30 miles and altitudes up to 10,000 feet and speeds up to 145 MPH. Pretty darn impressive...

Rural Broadband

2006-06-18T09:31:00.000-04:00

Article in the AJC today discussed the options for rural broadband (http://www.ajc.com/search/content/business/stories/0618rural.html) discussed how the demand for broadband has picked up in rural areas but supply has not been there to support the demand. DSL won't get there, cable is slow to build out, satellite is not the best option...

But wireless networks, which don't get a lot of coverage in the article are finding new ways to reach the rural areas. They do mention hot spots as means of gaining access, but that's just one means.

A couple of items they mention that I wanted to track include:

- US Dept. of Agriculture - Rural Utilities Service
- Georgia Tech - TechSmart
- GA Broadband Rural Initiative to Develop Georgia's Economy fund (BRIDGE) - $5M fund
- Roswell based Camvera Networks
- WildBlue Communications from Denver (satellite)

UPDATE: It turns out that Carl Peede, the President and CEO of Camvera Networks was once the COO for HomeCom Communications. Interesting historical note, I worked for Harvey Sax (CEO of HomeCom) when he initially started the company, helping establish the first set of customers and the initial network. If I recall, that was December of 1994...

Freedom to Connect - F2C

2006-04-05T11:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, so after having several more weeks to take a deeper look and having had several arguments presented, I'm definitely coming to the conclusion that legislation for network neutrality is a bad idea. I do think the fervor over the topic has done a good job of raising the awareness within the public, private and gov't sectors, at least letting people know that it is something that we should be concerned about, that we should pay attention to the workings of the network and providers, and that there are alternatives.

I think the best soliloquy on the subject that I've seen comes from Martin Geddes on his Telepocalypse blog. Most of the arguments stem from the idea that we want to allow for emergent behaviors (networks, usage, business models, technology, payment, etc.) and anything we do to try to control that will actually damage our ability to experiment and create new and innovative techniques to reach everybody in the way that they want to be reached.

His post is a long version of a speech he gave at the F2C Conference which looks like a very interesting place to be.

I guess I shouldn't complain though, I'm hanging out at the ICDE conference (International Conference on Data Engineering) which has its share of interesting talks and personalities, just a bit different layer on the stack.

Kipp

Georgia Tech CS doctoral moves up in bubble sort

2006-04-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

The College of Computing doctoral program continues to move up in the national ranking, according to the U.S News & World Report, we are now ranked 11th (tied with Cal Tech). Last ranking in 2002, we were 12th.

I'm not sure what the rest of the field above us is, except for 4 tied for first which are:

- MIT
- Berkeley
- CMU
- Stanford

Oh, and found Texas to be 9th in CS. Anybody know the other 5?

Check out the article "The College of Computing Grad Program Ranks Among the Best in the Nation" for more info, or if you are interested in the overall Georgia Tech rankings including, get this, the 16th straight number 1 ranking for your ISyE program, there is an article on the GT main site.

I know rankings aren't everything, but it's still kind of cool...

Kipp

Google Foundation kicks it up a notch

2006-03-30T21:03:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-29T06:23:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-25T15:44:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-24T09:25:00.000-05:00

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:

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

2006-03-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-23T07:50:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-22T16:28:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-22T07:57:00.000-05:00

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:

Built on COTS parts as much as possible starting with an F-350 chassis.
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.
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.
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.
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:

IPTV
RFID
Biotechnology
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

2006-03-20T21:03:00.000-05:00

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 basedon information theory, isolating the trend from the shorterterm natural modes of variability. Results show that the increasingtrend in number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the period1970-2004 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

2006-03-20T09:21:00.000-05:00

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:

History and Literature of the Old Testament Era
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

2006-03-20T08:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-16T13:41:00.001-05:00

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

2006-03-16T09:13:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-16T08:32:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-16T07:48:00.001-05:00

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

2006-03-13T09:18:00.000-05:00

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:

This speech coming from a Republican -- and one who was responsible for upholding our Constitution
Oddly inconsistent behavior wrt Dubai ports deal
Wire tapping debacle
Education and Research

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...
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.
Stem cell research...need I say more?
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.

Continued reduction in information available via Freedom of Information Act
Indefinite detention in Guantanoamo Bay (seems to go against our constitution)
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

2006-03-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

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

2006-03-12T11:26:00.000-05:00

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!

2006-02-24T07:44:00.000-05:00

Testing this new Blogger Mac widget from google. Wonder what the title will be?

Oooh, and I can do bold and italics, aint that keen?

Google also came out with a couple other widgets, one for gmail, and the other for search history...

www.google.com/macwidgets/

Auxillary Google Services

2006-02-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sure these are not new thoughts, but I'll throw them out anyway...

As I think about all of the information that Google (and others) get during their crawling, I'm thinking they could offer some business services with little additional expense on their side.

In particular, if you think about a company's web site, people spend money on several things:

- Content creation and translation
- Format and HTML conformance
- Web search optimization
- link/site structure
- syntax and spelling

So, how could Google help out? They could offer:

1) multi-lingual output
2) format and structure verification
3) search optimization/recommendations
4) link analysis - in this case, they could provide reports/analysis of in AND out links to a company's site
5) syntax and spelling checks across the scanned content
6) plagurism checks (notify me if my content shows up someplace else)

Essentially, this turns the process from a passive service to an active service, completing the feedback loop and creating an anti-entropy mechanism (btw, these are my favorites) in the process. The end result could be an improved web (content and structure). Google could offer the service at a relatively low rate, as the majority of the work is already being done. Companies would not have to individually invest in these processes, potentially saving money and improving their end users' experience on their sites...

Kipp

RSS discovery and spam

2006-02-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine (Mitchell Friedman) was chatting with me this morning about auto-discovery of rss feeds, which is a cool idea.

A couple of items he relayed:

You can add a 'link' tag to your html that allows discovery of feeds for a given page. For example, my blog now has this embedded link: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://kippsterblaster.blogspot.com/atom.xml">
For more on the link tag, check out this site
This dude Jermey Zawodny has a RSS Auto-Discovery 2.0 proposal on his blog
Those tricky spammers are at it in RSS, known RSS spam:

the best one was a list of recent patents as far as I could tell so the headline was real. and the summary was real - that is they seemed to be recent patents...but the link was spam
so now spammers can have mix and match legitimate content on the site with subversive content in one or the other or both.
and since the rss community is one big wheel of interlinking content/sites with hub sites like sindic8 -- interesting arena for the spammers to attack
and this is on top of the blog spam that has been and continues to be prevalent

The whole web/rss/blog spam and click fraud is an interesting topic. A colleague of mine at Tech (James Caverlee) is working on certain aspects of the web spam problem, especially looking at how page rank can be manipulated and vice-versa how to combat the problem.

I find the topic fascinating...if somewhat troubling at times...

Kipp

Holy cow this is cool!

2006-02-13T17:51:00.000-05:00

In the words of my buddy John Brothers:

Wow. This is a future with potential.

This dude Vic Divecha found a really amazing demo that is a bit reminiscent of some movie scenes in the recent past.

I GOTTA get me one!

More Mud on the Tires

2006-02-03T16:33:00.000-05:00

Mud on the Tires
Originally uploaded by kippster.

You've seen the flickr, now see the movie.

P.S. you'll likely have to download the entire thing since I'm too cheap to actually have a hosting service!

Careers in IT?

2006-02-02T18:04:00.000-05:00

A former colleague of mine recently posed this regarding a soon to graduate daughter:

some friends were pondering their future career paths. One young fellow has a strong interest in computers and asked me about the IT field. I would really be interested in how others would respond.

My response was:

As to your career question, I would be very emphatic about the positive possibilities in the field. I'd probably take a bit different approach, as I think we are entering a bit different era than the one you reminisce about (referring to the 'glory days' where you could just sit around and write code...).

In particular, computing has truly moved from being a purpose in and of itself - other than in a small subset of the research community. This is not all bad, it just means computing is now, even more so, a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. This may seem blasphemous to some or maybe even trite, but I really think it has changed.

It does seem harder to find the 'sit in a closet and code' jobs. I would suggest that people with other skills in combination with computing are the hot commodity in the future. And that other skill can be in a whole variety of areas -- business, project, management, etc. But even that is missing what I think is the big push.

I would (and have) recommended that people entering the field take a look at not only computing but combining computing with another passion (unless that is your only passion and you are a guru, and not a self-described guru, but a true genius). For example, take somebody who loves dealing with the environment -- combine that with computing and do environmental modeling, or sensor networks to monitor environments. Somebody who loves photography can marry computing and photography via the digital media and communications networks to create and extend the capabilities. etc.

Computing is so embedded in what we do and is doing so much to enable other fields to go beyond their present state that not knowing computing (and that's not HTML), algorithms, programming, data structures, etc. is going to be a deficit in the future, at least for the advancing jobs and careers.

Would I tell somebody to go into computer science to become a programmer? No, but then that's never been me since I'm not that good at pure programming. But would I tell somebody to go into computer science? Absolutely and I hope my daughters heed at least some of my advice (of course things may change in the next 10 years that I don't anticipate).

Lastly, I think there are many opportunities with companies that do respect and build on experience of people, I don't think that's a lost art, just precious when you find it. I'd hate to paint the world with such a broad brush. The world is a very large place -- which brings me to my last point. I would very much impress on young people (and old people like me) the value of an international, global view. I would highly recommend anybody looking into the future and planning their career to consider the international aspects of their chosen career. Not only from the perspective that can be gained, but also from the flexibility that it can create for future opportunities, cause even though the world is large, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is making it much smaller and so very interdependent.

TwoGirls - Mosaic

2006-02-01T14:09:00.000-05:00

TwoGirls - Small Mosaic
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Here's a fun one for you (at least it was for me!). I discovered some software (MacOSaiX) that is really cool -- yeah it has probably been around for awhile, but I'm slow!

This mosaic is of my daughters, the original is below.

These 625 images are all from the last year or so (Greg's armpit is part of Laney's face, Abuja, soccer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, friends, family, lake, river, nebraska, nascar, football...etc. make up the rest).

I shrunk this one down, the original is 12.6MB and wouldn't upload to flickr...

The software also lets you pull images from other sources (e.g. Google Images) to make mosaics...very cool.

moblog

2006-01-24T09:59:00.001-05:00

moblog
Originally uploaded by kippster.

I wanted to test this moblog thing...

This is a picture of the farm which my ancestors homesteaded back in

the day in southwest Nebraska. Picture was taken Thanksgiving 2005,

the farm house is off to the right, but the land is no longer owned

by my family (only the few acres around the house).

Game Theory

2006-01-24T06:07:00.000-05:00

I caught a presentation from a professor (Dr. Marco Castillo) who does research in Public Policy at Georgia Tech. He recently applied game theory to model war crimes/abuses in Peru to look at the behaviors and motivations and see if he can determine the types of discrimination that took place.

Very interesting talk, both the subject and the idea of using game theory to explore the motivations and behaviors.

It got me to thinking (which is rather scary) that I could apply game theory to the development of IXPs in developing nations. If I can model the participants, their motivations and the externalities, perhaps there is a way to better model the path to moving IXP creation forward faster...

The network effect of the Internet has impact both on the usefulness and value to end users, but also on the cost/benefit for providers -- perhaps this is the area that ISP providers are not groking -- the trust issue seems to be an overriding inhibitor to interconnections even though the evidence seems clear that it is in everybody's best interest to move forward.

I need to learn more about game theory and how to apply it to such a 'coordination' game...

Bolivia

2006-01-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

I'm still knee deep in Africa, working through the issues regarding the regional IXP and Internet access in the region.

In fact, I spent some time on Friday talking to both Risa's and Laney's classes about the trip. Okay, I didn't gain much additional insight into IXP's, but it was fun and I was happy to be able to share some information about another part of the world to a bunch of kindergarteners and third graders. The third graders really liked the goat head story!

I have expanded my world interest and am now in a course on Latin American Democracy/Politics. Yeah, I know, Africa isn't enough, I needed another continent to worry about!

Latin America has some very interesting things going on these days. A bunch of new leaders are moving into position, and most of them are leftist leaning socialist tending folk.

Most interesting, especially today, is Bolivia. Evo Morales was inaugurated as the President of Bolivia after a rehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifsounding democratic election in which he earned some 54% of the popular vote.

A bit of information about Evo can be found all over the net...but I like wikipedia. Some great information about who attended this event on MABB's blog. A great blog with commentary/translation/dictation of the ceremony today. An additional link to a great photostream from the trip Evo made yesterday.

Amazing cast of characters, and although Castro didn't attend the event, he did send his Vice-President, Carlos Lage...

24

2006-01-20T12:28:00.000-05:00

Okay, just a quick trip into the world of a geek...

For those of you who watch 24 (you know, the show with Jack Bauer)...well we watched the 10:00-11:00 episode for the new Day 5 season. Of course it was on Tivo, so when Jack sent an image of the terrorist to Chloe so that she could analyze the detonator on the dude's vest and reprogram Jack's phone to the detonation frequency...

Well, upon closer inspection, the email address he sent it to was co'brian@CTUGOV.net and the image was 106KB...

Not satisfied with that, I did a whois on the domain (there is no website for the domain), and found that it is registered to:

Twentieth Century Fox
21050 lassen St.
chatsworth, CA 91311
US

Domain Name: CTUGOV.NET

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Twentieth Century Fox rrgprops@yahoo.com
21050 lassen St.
chatsworth, CA 91311
US
818 717 5444

Record expires on 14-Oct-2008.
Record created on 14-Oct-2005.

I decided to play along, sent an email to Chloe and cc'd rrgprops@yahoo.com. I actually got a response:

thanks for the response, a lot more to come
Randy G.

--- Kipp Jones wrote:

> Chloe,
>
> Good work on identifying the detonator on that vest...amazing image processing on a 106KB image that Jack sent, that is some enhancement you've got going on!
>
> Kipp

Anyway, fun to play with the media interactions...thus ends your quick journey into my life!

Mud on the Tires

2006-01-18T08:30:00.001-05:00

Mud on the Tires
Originally uploaded by kippster.

Personally, I think it's time to trade in the TrailBlazer -- clearly we need a 4-wheel drive!

Yesterday, Pam wanted to see why one would want 4-wheel drive and tested the TrailBlazer (rather ironic name, since there was clearly no blazing going on here!) in some Georgia Clay.

Sometimes, you should just listen to music and not try to act it out :-)

Kipp

Wireless IXP

2006-01-17T21:30:00.000-05:00

There appears to be a dearth of information related to formulating an IXP using wireless technologies. This is not surprising given the fact that wireless technology has only recently become robust and cost effective enough to be used for local loop and backhaul activity.

There are several interesting areas around this subject in which to sink your teeth into. Wireless technology options (canopy, wimax, other), spectrum management, mast creation, salt water issues, signal propagation, privacy and security assurances, finacial models, etc.

I'll be building off of some great work that has gone on in the last 10 years regarding IXPs and extending it to include a wireless angle.

Broadcast coverage

2006-01-17T21:27:00.000-05:00

So, the local 11Alive (WXIA-TV Atlanta, NBC) did a small piece on our Georgia Tech course and the 5 teams that traveled around the world. Donna Lowry was the reporter, we spent over 90 minutes recording the material that squashed down to the 1.5 minute piece, but I'm happy that the program got the air time.

The story is online along with the video .

Beyond the news coverage, it was great to hear the different stories from the other members of the team. Some really great stories about experiences in the various lands, the people, the technology, the issues, and the possibilities. A lot of people talked about going on to do more work in this area -- one of the key outcomes of the class if you ask me.

Abuja Photos

2006-01-08T16:00:00.000-05:00

CIMG0528.JPG
Originally uploaded by kippster.

All of my Abuja photos should be available on Flickr.com.

Back at the office

2005-12-29T13:50:00.000-05:00

Now, back at the office, was able to start to organize my thoughts, notes and research from the trip.

Was able to reach a satellite teleport operator in Florida that does a fair amount of business in the West Africa region. He was very helpful in filling in some details on what the various satellite options were and what the relative costs of each were. Also, a US based teleport has a distinct disadvantage of European teleports in that these guys end up doing a double-hop satellite bounce to make it happen. This sounded like a tough business for US businesses, as it effectively doubles the cost of transmission...

I'm currently working on getting some information from PanAmSat as well, hopefully they'll be able to continue to fill in the gaps that I have as far as current capabilities and cost models for Internet access in the region.

Clearly, this multi-hop satellite based Internet solution is sub-optimal on several dimensions: cost, bandwidth, latency, capacity, reliability, locality.

As to cost, for example, a 256kbps dedicated both ways, C-band setup costs about $4k/month. I can get a full dedicated T1 (1.54Mbps) at just $400/month and that's not even the best deal. Latency -- I wish I had measured my latency from Abuja, but I can't imagine it being real good!

And then try to cover the $4k/month costs using the current market price of N100/hour at cyber cafes. At 100% capacity, each PC can generate some $500/month -- just to cover a decent dedicated network, one would need 8 full time fully utilized PCs. Since that just won't happen, what appears to be happening is the providers are opting for shared bandwidth (perhaps a 35:1 sharing ratio) to get the costs of bandwidth down, with a complete loss in quality of service and anything approaching broadband speeds.

Not the best situation, and since the connectivity continues to be fragmented with each provider solving the same problem over and over again, their is no market strength for the African providers...

Back in the States

2005-12-29T13:24:00.000-05:00

So, it's been over a week since last I posted and I've done a bit more traveling since then...

I was planning on a leisurely evening before I left Abuja, but my friends arrived at the hotel (Nsikan, Arvind, Joshua, Nsikan's sister Alma, her friend, and a friend of Joshua's), so I had to go have a final farwell beer (or 2). It was a good send off!

Wednesday morning, I get up around 5, check out, and head to the airport at 6. Had 3,000 Naira left to my name so that was what I ended up paying for the cab ride. At the airport good and early, which was good as I had to argue with the British Air folk in order to get them to check my luggage at least as far as Washington. Got that taken care of and hang out awaiting the flight. My last images of Nigeria...

On the long flight to London, I did get to at least see the Sahara out the window as we flew over a lot of sand. Very impressive, would love to experience just a bit of the desert in person...

...but it is a very large desert!

And then it was fun seeing the European land mass appear...

And I was able to test my zoom from 37,000 feet moving at some 500 Mph to get a glimpse of some European city...wonder what city this is?

After switching planes at Heathrow, I took United back to Dulles...another hefty flight and fairly well packed in. Got some reading done and I think I caught a bit of a nap. Once in D.C., was very surprised to get through customs with all my luggage (given my luck going to Nigeria!). But I did, and it was about 7:30PM EST, and my flight isn't until 6:30AM on Thursday morning...

Tried to catch a late night flight to ATL, but they were all booked...couldn't get my boarding pass, so found a really comfortable (as if) chair in baggage claim that was close to an outlet so I could watch a movie (Tombstone) and catch a couple minutes of shut eye before my morning flight...

You can see my morning alarm clock at Dulles...

Back in ATL, had another chance to experience MARTA before finally seeing my family at the pick-up spot. A very happy reunion!

It's good to be back home, if only for a few hours before we head off to celebrate Christmas in Jackson, Mississippi...another 7 hours on the road, but a good relaxing time is awaiting me at the end of the trail!

Last Day!

2005-12-20T12:35:00.000-05:00

Well, unfortunately, my last day was spent mostly in a funk -- I apparently got something, ate something, or dranks something that didnt suit me. I was fighting a fever all day while trying to complete my outline for a Regional IXP position paper for Mrs. Emakpore.

I did get it done, but I struggled through it which was a drag.

My final meeting with Mrs. Emakpore occured this morning, where we discussed the framework and several issues that she wanted to make sure were included in the outline (things like national versus regional, where would it be located, coordinating across agencies/countries...). Big project, but lots of potential to spur a massive leap forward for the region in terms of connectivity and cost of said connectivity.

I also have been using SkpeOut the last couple days -- since my cell phone still doesn't have a charger (I decided to do an experiment and see if I could live without it). Apparently I can, but I have to find other outlets! SkypeOut lets you call from your computer to any old POTS phone out there. Actually called Arvind across the table -- would have been interesting to trace those packets, and then the return connection, to Nigeria and ultimately to the cell provider. Makes for an interesting delay, but hey, it's cool!

Finish packing tonight, head to the airport early in the morning to catch a 9:00 flight out. Sad and happy all at the same time. Eager to be home, definitely. Looking forward to a lot of things back home. NOT looking forward to the flights home though. At least I'm flying British Air and not some Nigerian airline...shikes, another near miss yesterday with an emergency landing of a Bellview (Nigerian) aircraft in Ghana flying from Lagos.

Well, likely my last post from Nigeria, so thanks for everybody who has read this, and feel free to repsond or leave comments!

Kipp

Back to the grind...

2005-12-19T14:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it's like Monday and all, so we schlepped into the office and spent the morning slaving away. Really sucks to be us!

Actually, we did do work, all three of us were rather tied to this one spot -- we could have moved away every once in awhile, but this appears to be the only spot with outlets. So, while wireless in one sense, we were very much tied to a wire. And, if it's there, you might as well jack in, right?

I spent the day preparing for a meeting with my local boss, Mrs. Emakpore, I have a 10:00 meeting with her tomorrow to discuss the status and what the end result she can look forward to should look like. We'll see how that one goes...

Also, was able to take a bit of time to complete my shopping activities -- you know, giving back to the community and all! This time, did most of it on my own, so I think I gave, and gave, and gave...but that's okay, right (Pam, you got my back, right?).

Spent the evening doing some more work and had to take a break to get some shots of our office at night....

Arvind, hanging at the office, 'working' late

Arvind and Santa get real close!

Does the boathouse look inviting or what?

Across the pool view...

Sunday

2005-12-19T02:22:00.000-05:00

Sunday was mostly a day of rest and shopping. That's right, I travel all the way around the world just to shop -- I'm sure my man points have just gone down again...

Spent the morning reading and doing a bit of work. Then hung at the pool for an hour before heading to the Wuse Market again. This time to actually buy things. We were able to get Joseph (our host's driver as seen in the picture) to take us to the market and make sure we didn't get completely taken by the locals in the negotiation process. Really appreciate him helping us out -- we bought him a couple of things in appreciation.

It's a very lengthy process actually performing a transaction here, the art of price negotiation is certainly not one of my strengths. I think Joseph was appalled whenever I got involved! Both Arvind and I were able to find some items of interest and think we ended up doing quite well in the end.

Later in the afternoon, spent at the Boathouse for an early dinner, some work, then back to the room for an early night.

Abuja National Mosque

2005-12-18T02:56:00.000-05:00

The Abuja National Mosque is not very far from the Sheraton, and provides a nice element to take some photos, especially during a sunrise on a Sunday morning. This first one was created using the 'illustration' setting on my camera and I thought it had a pleasing look about it.

Note that many of my photos of Abuja include a hazy element to them. This is actually dust brought in by winds coming south from the Sahara -- it's called the Harmattan. This article talks about the Harmattan along with a number of other things that happen during this season.

Mosque highlighted by the sun hitting the the infamous "harmattan dust haze"

Close up of the mosque during sunrise in the dust

The market and steak

2005-12-18T02:26:00.000-05:00

After Arvind (finally) completed some work he needed to get out, we decided to take a trip to the Wuse Market.

Traffic to the market was crazy busy. I thought we were going to die of asphixiation before we made it in!

This market is quite large and stuffed with vendors hawking their wares. As we arrived rather late in the day (Arvind's fault), we had little time to actually shop, so we took the time to simply browse and explore the market.

Our driver, Ishaku, graciously volunteered to walk us around the market and show us the various areas. Meanwhile, a kid Muhamed attempted to intervene and was roundly told off by our driver. For some reason, I think Arvind and I stood out a bit and made for an easy mark!

Into the market...

There was an amazing array of goods and wares. Lots of cloth, clothing, and tailors throughout the market. Shoes, bags, belts, watches, jewlery, electronics, cleaning products, rugs, much of everything -- row after row, shop after shop.

The environment was somewhat reminiscent of my memories of our county fair. Lots of people yelling at you to come in to the shops, people stopping by to hawk their goods, carneys calling out, people moving about. A very full sensory situation.

We looked at several outfits (I can never remember all of the Nigerian terms for the clothes) as well as some raw material. At this point, we were rushed so I declined to purchase until I had more time and not be rushed by any external factors.

Ishaku then showed us to the food section of the market. Fruits and vegatables of all sorts and colors and sizes. The meat section was especially interesting -- from stacks of fish to odd looking things that I'd rather not know. Butchers were cutting up sections of meat in one area, lots of knives hacking away and flies buzzing. Probably could have gotten that goat head here!

When we took our cameras out to get a photo with Ishaku, the crowd started milling about. Ishaku was especially interested in seeing his picture! Some of the crowd would step out of the way of the photo, but would immediately surround us again. Very interesting.

Arvind was able to get him a pair of what I would call flip-flops and what others seem to call slippers for N300 (down from the proferred N600). We examined some more material and then the shops were all closing down...

That evening we spent a few hours working by the pool before hunger overcame us. Off to the Ibuku Steakhouse for a nice dinner. I hadn't eaten yet, so food was tasting very good. New England clam chowder, a steak, and some mushrooms -- after that, I was pretty much ready for a night's sleep!

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