Once again the enemies of Network Neutrality are doing their very best to help out those dedicated to pushing through laws to ensure Network Neutrality on the Internet.
How does this happen? Well, the main opponents to Network Neutrality on the Internet are the major national ISPs that provide most of the broadband connections for Americans. And many of these very same ISPs are also the large national cell-phone carriers.
And there is no greater example of the potential dangers of an Internet without Network Neutrality than the major cell phone carrier networks.
Here are the emerging technologies stories for the week of July 27th.
4G Network Tests - Verizon announced that they will launch tests of their 4G LTE network in Seattle and Boston later this year. The 8 to 10 Mbps speed sounds nice but we'll see.
Robot Firefighters - The London Fire Brigade has been using robot firefighters to deal with high-risk situations such as fires involving acetylene tanks. According to the report, the tests of these robot firefighters have been very successful.
Aluminum Goes Transparent - Scientists at Oxford University were able to turn aluminum invisible (for a very short time) using a high-powered laser blast. The scientists claim that this could have a huge impact for future technologies such as nuclear fusion. Though it doesn't sound like it would work as a Romulan cloaking device.
Click here to see the slideshow While the varying parties in the operating system wars like to tout the advantages that each OS holds over its rivals, all of them share one thing in common. Whether it's Linux, Mac OS X or Windows, none of them are particularly quick about booting up, especially if one is using older hardware.
In fact, along with size and price, one the main attractions of Linux-based netbooks is their ability to turn on and boot up fast, letting their users get to work checking mail and browsing the web in seconds. So an operating system option that provided close to instant-on capabilities for any laptop or desktop could be an attractive option for many people.
This is the idea behind Presto, a new beta product from Linux vendor Xandros. When installed on a system, Presto gives users the option to quickly boot into a lightweight netbook style operating system that provides access to core applications such as web browsers, chat tools, and productivity applications.
My colleague Joe Wilcox recently posted on the Microsoft Watch blog an interesting article entitled "The Problem with Netbooks". In this article he puts forth a compelling argument why netbooks won't last as a significant segment and will become subsumed into laptops or disappear altogether.
If I had read Joe's article a week before he posted it I probably would have agreed with nearly all of his arguments. But after traveling to DEMO 09 and getting a firsthand look at how many people are using netbooks, my opinions on the category have changed a bit.
Setting up a video monitoring system in your home, office or business can be a tedious and sometimes expensive task, often involving permanent server systems.
Avvak's Vue attempts to solve this problem through an inexpensive solution that uses small, easily mounted and deployed cameras, a central video router that requires no PC or server, and a Web-based service for video deployment.
At DEMO 09, I had the chance to talk with Avaak CEO and founder Gioia Messinger about the capabilities and features of the Vue video system.
The second half of day one of DEMO 09 was shaping up to be a disappointment for me. A group of products focused on mobile devices and cell phones failed to generate much interest at all (sadly the coolest product in the bunch was Skout Out, a product for flirting via one's cell phone),
And this group of products was followed by a fairly depressing panel, where a group of Vcs and investors talked about the economy and the state of funding start-ups. The panel can be summed up by one panelist who said that we are currently in "the worst fundraising environment ever."
For the upcoming Demo show, the key word is definitely change. The self-styled "launch pad for emerging technology" will see some of the most significant changes in its history.
By far the biggest change is the departure of the show's longtime executive producer, Chris Shipley. During this show, Shipley will be essentially passing the executive producer position to Matt Marshall of VentureBeat.
Oh no! Technology has taken over my life! There's no escaping it! What am I to do?
If these kinds of statements sound familiar to you, then you've probably been exposed to the frequent handwringing about the invasion of technology into our modern lives and how it's turning everyone into anti-social introverts who constantly stare at their phones and other gadgets.
A recent article in the Boston Globe took this idea even further with a piece titled "The End of Alone." In the article, the author discusses how new technology is making it basically impossible to enjoy or even have moments of solitude. The author essentially says that if Thoreau were alive today, he'd be busy at Walden Pond texting pals, updating his Twitter feed and checking his friends' Facebook status.
I've never really thought of myself as much of a seer, prognosticator or predictor of the future, but based on a column I wrote back in 2005, I may just have a future in the prediction field.
In that column, "Security Getting Trampled in the Rush to RFID," I put forth a "hypothetical" situation where I could sit in a city square with nothing but a laptop and a small wireless device and--because of the ubiquity of unsecure RFID enabled gadgets--be able to do everything from read passports, identify employees and students, and even access credit card numbers and information.
When I wrote that column, I was roundly jeered by RFID proponents. They said what I envisioned was impossible, that to read those RFID tags I would need to be within inches of the person carrying them and would have to use a very large and expensive device.
With the deadline for the digital TV conversion fast approaching and with Congress still working on an extension, there are lots of people complaining about the lack of coupons and the fact that some people won't get coupons in time to get converters before the analog TV signals go dark.
Of course, there is an equal number of people saying this is no big deal and that, at $60, the converters aren't that big of an expense, especially for those who can afford it and are just asking for the coupons because they can.
But to me the interesting question is, Are the converters really worth $60 or did the $40 coupon program artificially boost the price by, oh, I don't know, $40?
