The keywords on mobility in the Dutch "cloud", the size of the word is proportional to the frequency of use in the media.
Vsually representation by Daniel Erasmus (DTN)
Hyperconnectivity: October 2008 Archives
Beer-commercials tend to touch the soul of the (male) inhabitants of a country. As such they a perfect indicator of reality.
Take a look at this Budweiser commercial and a "pastiche" made in the USA, 8 years apart. Apparently according to the actors who have independently created the 2008 version there is hope....
2000
2008
Apparently even Deutsche Telekom has come to the inevitable conclusion:
if you want to upgrade the "last mile", the physical network connecting individual homes so you can support broadband and TV far beyond the limitations of copper-based networks, you have to cooperate.
Fiber is so superior in capabilities that there is no case for duplication of that part of the network. It would be as usefull as having duplicate electricity lines to your home.
They are following the trend: KPN has already started upon this route.
The "quote du jour" is by Tom Evslin.
"Nothing should be too big to fail because nothing can be made failure-safe."
"There's no question anymore that institutions which are too big to fail are also too big to leave unregulated. [..]
Those of us who have built complex interactive systems know that nodes which are significantly large compared to the network as a whole pose an outsized risk. The Internet is a triumph of decentralized relatively small nodes, none of which is "too big to fail". [..]
There is significant question whether any degree of regulation will be sufficient to prevent failure. Nodes fail for unexpected reasons - usually not the ones you're watching for."
IPDemocracy has an interesting piece which demonstrates the power of Youtube as a super-node in communication. The McCain campaign is protesting against the takedown of campaign ads that are placed on Youtube. The big networks are apparently requesting the removal of these ads on the basis that they contain copyrighted material.
This demonstrates that
"One thing is for sure: YouTube seems to be the only place that counts for the
McCain-Palin campaign...and all other campaigns. Although YouTube was crucial to
politics before (remember the Macaca video that sunk George Allen) it has become
with this election season the undisputed dominant video hub for anybody
interested in politics."
BoingBoing reports on a clever use of connectivity in the US presidential election campaign. A giant electronic billboard happened to be opposite a open area where Palin would speak. Everyone could SMS their hard questions to the candidate, and the questions where shown on the giant billboard.
So far, de Democrats have shown to understand the new powers of connectivity better than the Republicans.
Link
So far, de Democrats have shown to understand the new powers of connectivity better than the Republicans.
Link
The Smart Lighting Centre has succeeded in grabbing everybodies attention with the idea to use LED lighting for communication. Modulating the light output at relatively high frequencies will be invisible to the human eye, the LED will seem to be burning constantly. Ofcourse there might be some questions to answer: how to keep the perceived light intensity constant while modulating, how fast can you modulate LED's designed for a different applications, etc.
The most interesting application in my mind is in cars. Imagine if LED headlights and taillights are constantly communicating with their environment, about distance, speed, direction and some more. Cars could react to each others movements, pedestrians and cyclists could have an early warning of imminent collisions.
Hyperconnectivity in mobility. My imagination lights up immediately.
It's official now. PointTopic reports that China has more broadband subscribers than the USA. Even more impressive, in Q2 2008 China added 5 mio more subscribers against 1.1 mio for the USA, so the diverging trend accelerates. The sheer volume of users will gather its own momentum, new trends and uses will develop in this space, particular to China. Anybody knows how to type in Chinese?
"Publish first, and check the facts later !" seems to be the name of the game nowadays. But quite often some simple checks can reveal that preposterous claims are flying around without any solid basis.
Ars Technica has done a thorough job in checking the origins of the claims of "Big Content" that piracy would cost the USA more than USD 250 billion and 750.000 jobs. Quite over the top, if you take into account that according to Ars "$250 billion is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of
the movie, music, software, and video game industries."
Based on these claims legislation is proposed that would make ISP's, the police force and courts unpaid fee collectors for this industry. Ars shows that these claims are without any solid basis,and have been constructed from unsubstantiated remarks in reports as far back as 20 years ago.
Quite a demasqué.
On October 5 the Amsterdam Internet Exchange set a new record: more than 500 Gbps of traffic was exchanged. 3 Years ago the record was 50 Gbps, a tenfold increase in 3 years. Interestingly enough the peaks are reached during evening hours and weekend: consumers drive the traffic volumes, not businesses.
