The Globe and Mail has an article about bringing high-speed wireless Internet to far northern Inuit communities:
He [Itorcheak, Nunanet Communications] has been able to surf the Net from as much as 25 kilometres beyond where his servers are supposed to reach, convincing him it is only a matter of time before everyone in this massive, isolated land mass is connected. By January, the territory hopes to have high-speed availability in every community.
"We are already the most-wired society in the world," he says.
In a land where air travel is almost prohibitively expensive, he sees data transmission as one more potential resource for the Far North: meetings by video-conferencing, health care by video, family contact, weather information, tracking hunters and fishermen. . . .
15-year-old girls are now the world's top consumers of computer chips. So says this article from the LA Times. It has other interesting things to say about how kids use presence and networking applications.
...via Smart Mobs
In the US, Ubroadband connections have finally surpassed dial-up:
In the first quarter of this year, broadband connections for the first time overtook dial-up.
Cable and phone companies, between them, are expected to add 8 million broadband subscribers this year, to bring their total to 38.7 million.
...via Smart Mobs
An article on what constitutes a Community of Practice:
Communities of practice (CoP) have been hailed as the perfect vehicle for knowledge transfer and competence development, and the associated theory presented as a bridge between the theories of organisational learning and organisational performance (Snyder: 1997). Unlike some 'here today-gone tomorrow' solutions to corporate under-performance, such as business process reengineering or core- competency, CoP theory appears to have had a much longer period of maturation, finally coming to prominence as a result of its co-evolution with the theory and practices of knowledge management, especially the development of computer enabled and mediated networking. It has gained considerable currency in the field of corporate development because of the emphasis that is now placed on knowledge as a competitive asset. With its wider diffusion has come a proliferation of community types, such as, communities of interest, virtual communities, and distributed communities of practice, all of which, it could be argued, have diluted and even distorted the original concept. This may be due in part to the fuzziness of the original definition and the difficulty some may have of distinguishing a CoP from a team, a learning organisation, or some form of informal social group.
...via elearningpost
silicon.com reports on the University of Dundee's installation of a converged network to offer wireless and VoIP:
The University of Dundee is installing a £2.4m converged network as part of a project to boost the IT infrastructure which will offer VoIP for staff and free wireless for students.
The network is part of the university's £5m Network Infrastructure and Communications (NetComms) Project - which is in turn part of the Network Improvement Programme, which kicked off in 2002 with the aim of creating a world-class network infrastructure for the university.
...via Smart Mobs
Flying, clustering computers via Smart Mobs:
A tiny helicopter that serves up a Web page over a wireless network has been made by UK scientists using off-the-shelf hardware.
The 70-gram prototype, is the first in a group of flying computers that are planned to one day combine swarm intelligence, the ability to maneuver like a flock of birds, and wireless computing, to process information the way cluster-based supercomputers do.
From an article in Linux Journal by Don Marti:
In this crazy business of ours, every once in a while, companies go into a frenzy to sell technology that doesn't work to customers who don't want it. In the 1990s, did customers want overpriced UNIX from bickering vendors or stable-any-day-we-promise Windows NT? Sorry, neither one works for us. Support Linux, please. Or on-line services. AOL or Compuserve? We'll take the Internet, thanks.
...
When I talk to working IT professionals, the trend is to open up information "behind the firewall" at a company-not lock it down. People aren't worried about how to DRM-ize everything. Instead, I'm seeing enterprise Wikis. "Enterprise Wiki" still sounds funny, but companies with lots of trade secrets are rolling them out. "Edit this Page" adds value, and DRM has the opposite effect.
...via BoingBoing
According to this article, Seattle and San Francisco are the top cities for wireless web access in the US currently.
...via Smart Mobs
Via Smart Mobs--United Airlines will be offering wi-fi on flights:
UNITED Airlines has become the first US carrier to get regulatory approval to offer wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi access, on its airborne domestic flights in the US.
United said the Federal Aviation Administration granted approval for the service to be offered by Verizon Airfone for passenger and crew use of wireless technology.
United and Verizon said that approval was granted after the two companies successfully demonstrated that the usage of the wireless technology known as 802.11 within the cabin does not affect the aircraft's operation.
National Geographic has footage from inside a tornado.
...via BoingBoing
Nichole, Floyd and I--along with Ray Kimsey and Kevin Gamble--gave our talk this morning on Sharing Content Through Syndication. Our talk had been moved several times and attendance was a little disppointing (I think we had six people, including Brian and Beth Raney, who left another session early to be our session host).
We talked about the aggregation system that we developed (Nichole did much of the programming; Ray and Nichole worked on the web services part).
If you want to see the slides, they're here. You may also want to check out the site itself.
And I have now seen the Alamo...
Elaine has blogged the keynote speaker this morning so, you know, I don't have to...
I also went to talks on eXtension, our CMS development process (good talk!), and talked to Blair Fannin about podcasting in Texas.
I have walked most of the Riverwalk, but have not seen the Alamo yet.