“traditional” media is going to add this to their already big bag of tricks, but anyway this is not going to change the opened possibility for anyone to make a tv internet show with lots of not so expensive tricks

CNET News.com’s Erica Ogg visits CBS 5 in San Francisco to see how the newsroom is using a Slingbox to get live video feeds for traffic, weather and breaking news instead of relying on standard news vans using satellite signals.

text & video: Consumer device an innovation for TV news crew

Not having 3G is really dummy. even in EUA everyone is talking about EVDO and they are also talking about the 1.8Mbps plus cell network. its funny because we have it in Portugal already working.

Here in the Netherlands, where I am, its much more expensive and slow unfortunately.

Connected to that but also with the concept of comunication device I was/am expecting it to do iChat AV through wifi and 3G, so it is now missing a small front camera for that.

it is also missing a usb host interface for something you could think about…, and why didn’t they predicted the use of some flash memory card… there are now sizes of 4 GB… and so it could be very helpful.

Let’s hope these and also the 4 and 8 Gb versions get upgraded to something bigger and better.

I suppose that they will me messing with the iPhone and so the commercial version can be somehow different and better.

And last but not list, as Pedro Melo questioned, how can you do some programming on it? dashboard? some new API? how?

no problem. everyone will be talking until the day it sells, and even after that we will be still talking about that…

There is one more funny detail about all this, the guy from Cingular, made some menaces about anyone who hack the device or use it with another network… I am afraid it is going to be a bigger story by next summer.

ohhh well. I am still mostly waiting for Leopard OS.

Happy 2007 for everyone!

for now I am just publishing some links:

– ascii moves to the javastraat — Ascii

– ASCII site (in english)

ASCII has a interesting translation “Amsterdam Subversive Center for Information Interchange”.

The project involves a place (in a squat), where you can use the internet, get to learn things about it, and there is lots of recycling, use and abuse of open source.

It’s a very nice project and I intend to learn much more and maybe try to help wherever I can.

I will listen to talk at the WTH – “Community wireless NL”, Wireless networks in Amsterdam and Leiden (Rudi Van Drunen, Jaap and Rop Gonggrijp), where there will be some talk about another very interesting project… – Amsterdam Network Collective – een draadloos (internet) netwerk in Amsterdam.

We will see.

mas aqui têm um projecto minimamente detalhado de um telefone daqueles de plástico com os números em disco (rotary) e que na realidade é um telefone celular… – Spark Fun Electronics.
se desejado até pode ser comprado por quase 400 USD e podem desde já ver o manual de instruções em formato PDF.

nas palavras do próprio Casey Halverson membro da SeattleWireless:

TacomaTrainNode – SeattleWireless

Please note that this WiFi access point follows me wherever I go. I happen to ride the train to and from work, and while you may use it, it is not officially provided by SoundTransit? and not connected in any way. It is fully contained in this very mobile backpack.

artigo na SeattleWireless: Seattlest: Homebrew WiFi on Sounder Train

[ visto em Boing Boing: Free open WiFi on Tacoma-Washington train, courtesy WiFi hacker ]

É uma iniciativa que abrange outros museus – notícia na newsletter do Instituto das Artes… vou ver se tiro fotos da coisa.

Aguardo a nossa experiência de navegação internética com o tejo como fundo…

nota: copiei o artigo por achar tão curioso, mas claro que tem o link: The Limits of SpongeBob SquarePants

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040930.html
The Limits of SpongeBob SquarePants

One Canadian’s Wireless Neighborhood Network Could Someday Serve Us All
September 30, 2004

By Robert X. Cringely

Like many of us, Andrew Greig put a WiFi access point in his house so he could share his broadband Internet connection. But like hardly any of us, Andrew uses his WiFi network for Internet, television, and telephone. He cancelled his telephone line and cable TV service. Then his neighbors dropped-by, saw what Andrew had done, and they cancelled their telephone and cable TV services, too, many of them without having a wired broadband connection of their own. They get their service from Andrew, who added an inline amplifier and put a better antenna in his attic. Now most of Andrew’s neighborhood is watching digital TV with full PVR capability, making unmetered VoIP telephone calls, and downloading data at prodigious rates thanks to shared bandwidth. Is this the future of home communications and entertainment? It could be, five years from now, if Andrew Greig has anything to say about it.

The advantage Andrew Greig has over most of the rest of us is that he works for Starnix, an international Open Source software and services consultancy in Toronto, Canada. Starnix, which deals with huge corporate clients, has the brain power to get running what I described above. And it goes much further than that simple introduction.

Somewhere in Andrew’s house is a hefty Linux server running many applications, including an Asterisk Open Source VoIP software PBX. There is no desktop PC in Andrew’s house. Instead, he runs a Linux thin client on a Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 Linux PDA. Sitting in its cradle on Andrew’s desk at home, the Zaurus (running a special copy of Debian Linux, NOT as shipped by Sharp) connects to a full-size keyboard and VGA display, and runs applications on the server. Another cradle, monitor and keyboard are at Andrew’s office, where he also doesn’t have a PC. Walking around in his house, the Zaurus (equipped with a tri-mode communications card) is a WiFi VoIP phone running through the Asterisk PBX and connecting to the Vonage VoIP network. Walking out of his house, the Zaurus automatically converts to the local mobile phone carrier, though with a data connection that still runs back through Vonage. At Starbucks, it’s a Wifi Vonage phone. At Andrew’s office, it is a WiFi extension to the office Asterisk PBX AND to Andrew’s home PBX. That’s one PDA doing the job of two desktop PCs, a notebook PC, and three telephones.

Yeah, but what about that wireless TV? How does that work? Andrew’s server runs Myth TV, an Open Source digital video recorder application, storing on disk in MPEG-4 format (1.5-2 megabits-per-second) more than 30,000 TV episodes, movies and MP3 music files. “As each new user comes online, I add another TV card to the system so they can watch live TV,” says Andrew, “but since there are only so many episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, nearly everything that isn’t news or sports is typically served from disk with full ability to jump forward or back at will. We’ve reached the point now where the PVR has so much in storage already that it is set to simply record anything that isn’t already on disk.”

Think about it. These folks up in Canada can not only watch everything we can watch on TV, on a whim they can watch every episode of the original Star Trek in the order they were broadcast ALL ON ONE WEEKEND. I wouldn’t do that, true, but I also CAN’T do that.

At this point, intellectual property lawyers are supposed to start reaching for their telephones to call Canada, but it won’t do any good because all this content is perfectly legal and here’s how. With the exception of local channels, which come from an antenna, all of Andrew’s video content comes from a C-band (big dish) satellite receiver (receivers, actually), and is fully paid for. “I buy the channels just like a cable system does or a motel that wants to offer HBO, from the National Programming Service,” says Andrew. “And as a result I pay wholesale prices. People don’t realize how much of a markup there in is the cable business. The Discovery Networks, for example, cost me $0.26 per customer per month. The IP laws in both the U.S. and Canada say that if I have legal access to this content I can store and use it. And the over-the-air channels, of course, are free.”

Remember how in the go-go Internet days of three to four years ago, we used to talk about “disintermediation?” That was using technology to remove middle men from transactions. Well, what Andrew Greig is doing is dis-intermediating both the telephone and TV cable companies. And he’d like to dis-intermediate the Internet Service Providers, too.

Starnix is getting ready to take its technology on the road, so to speak, selling and licensing it to all comers. One plan is to create a wireless ISP offering these services, growing it around what Andrew calls “wireless sweet spots.” The difference between a “hotspot” and a “sweet spot” is that a sweet spot is both hot AND cheap. “We were installing a wireless network in a large hospital and showed them that there were economies of scale to be gained from lighting four of the fiber pairs coming-in from their ISP, rather than two. Their costs go down and we benefit from that lower pricing and pick up the additional bandwidth for wireless service outside the hospital.” Since Starnix installs wireless networks all over (other Starnix sites include the Time-Warner intergalactic HQ in New York), this is a provisioning model that could be used over and over.

Unlike most other wireless networks, Starnix uses 802.11a, which matches the 54 megabits-per-second speed of 802.11g, but does so in the five GHz band where there is less interference. Even more important, while 802.11g (and -b) have a maximum of only three non-conflicting channels, 802.11a in North America supports 24 non-conflicting channels for at least eight times the total bandwidth.

This would all be just an interesting and very nerdly proof of concept except that Starnix has a global reputation (one of their wireless network customers is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police — Canada’s more colorful version of the FBI), and the Canadian Government is putting some money into helping establish the wireless ISP.

But there is an industrial or commercial side to this, too. Right now, OEMs are lining-up to bring this Starnix model of hardware, software, and connectivity to the workplace. “It’s the six percent solution,” says Greig. “Businesses don’t want to admit this, but they spend up to 12 percent of gross revenues on IT including communications. By going to Open Source and thin clients and VoIP we could cover all their needs for half that cost — six percent. No separate hardware, software, bandwidth, or support costs, just a flat six percent. We have large partners right now who are getting ready to take this proposition to market.”

What’s happening in Andrew Greig’s neighborhood is going to happen in three to five years in many neighborhoods. The look will be slightly different with technologies like WiMax wireless networking playing a role. Moore’s Law, too, is going to have a significant impact on bringing down the cost of implementing this dream. That Starnix thin client needed to drive your TV costs $250 in volume today but three years from now it will cost $70. Or maybe the thin client will be in the TV, itself. With Linux proliferating in consumer devices that’s almost a sure thing since even if Sony doesn’t do it some firmware hacker will.

That’s the big lesson here, not that some guys up in Canada can run their own Star Trek marathon, but that Open Source software is leading to digital devices being used in large volumes in ways their designers never envisioned. This takes control of the network out of the hands of the providers and into the hands of the users. And the outcome doesn’t have to be some socialistic information economy. On the contrary, it means that whole new business models will appear to take advantage of the fact that all types of communications and all types of content will be able to reach all parts of the market with almost no friction. Following that line of thought, even I might find a way to make a living.

Maybe.

E o projecto da “rede da gente” em uk?

E isso faz-me lembrar alguns projectos giros como:

– o Internet bookmobile que é uma carrinha com ligação à internet de banda larga por satélite e através da qual podemos navegar na Internet e escolher um livro dos milhares disponíveis e que já estão no domínio público, utilizando o arquivo – archive.org (fotos) e ainda saímos de lá com uma versão impressa na impressora laser que têm na carrinha – como aliás podem apreciar na foto do lado.
– o projecto de VoIP na Indonésia – VoIP Merdeka.
– e o projecto do Butão.

E ainda um artigo no Register inglês sobre o assunto.

nota:

Uma das redes que pode eventualmente ser usada como backbone de uma rede sem fios num país em vias de desenvolvimento será a RBGAN, que tem actualmente um custo de utilização semelhante ao GPRS (GSM), sendo no entanto praticamente omnipresente e portanto isenta de roaming que é normalmente mais caro. Por ser concorrente do GPRS tende a aumentar a velocidade, que é actualmente de 144 Kbps e quem sabe talvez venha a ser comercialiazada em regime flat fee (sem custo em função do volume de tráfego e tempo).

Por curiosidade no google encontrei um professor Jens Jakobsen da universidade Aalborg da Dinamarca que tem uma proposta curiosa. E que cita as palavras de Kofi Annan:

The new information and communications technologies are among the driving forces of globalization. They are bringing people together, and bringing decision makers unprecedented new tools for development. At the same time, however, the gap between information “haves” and “have-nots” is widening, and there is a real danger that the world’s poor will be excluded from the emerging knowledge-based global economy. … We need to think of ways to bring wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) applications to the developing world, so as to make use of unlicensed radio spectrum to deliver cheap and fast Internet access. We also need to explore the possibility of creating an open international university. Surely, experts can think of many more ideas along these lines.
Kofi Annan, November 5 2002.

alguns artigos em muniwireless sobre o assunto: NY Times does not understand the hotspot no-business model | Scottsburg, Indiana wireless network saves the community.

Mas creio que é inevitável o fortalecimento de redes comunitárias e em malha, pois é uma forma natural de afirmação de uma comunidade com uma identidade própria.

nota: mais um exemplo em Montreal Canada.

nota2: E aqui em Portugal temos o Movimento Wireless Português.

Of course, no one is immune to the effects of bad weather, but we faired much better than the telephone and cable companies did. There were poles that were snapped in two and wires all over the place in some parts of town.” Many businesses reported no phone service and a few were still without electricity hours after the storms swept through. However, Fastline clients were able to use VoIP telephone service to send and receive calls as if nothing had happened.

Para ver fotos e um quase relatório podemos consultar o site da própria fastline.

artigo em dailywireless.org – “WiFi Hacker Busted”.

quando pensamos em redes sem fio (wifi) e locais não urbanos, pensaríamos em acesso à internet, em resolver o “last mile” para levar banda larga mais longe…

mas não! A ideia é conseguirmos mediante umas coleiras sofisticadas e uma rede wifi que os rebanhos sejam mantidos ou levados por cercas virtuais… Extraordinário!

é um artigo na Register – “Rawhide gets taste of the Wi-Fi cowboy”, de Lucy Sherriff (8 Junho).

Venha de lá esse UMTS do Clix!!

E parece que os nossos futuros modems até vão ser dual band, yess!!

WiFi com usb dongles e reflectores bem baratos
– notícia em DailyWireless
– entrada em boing boing
– site na nz – USB adaptors & DIY antenna = “Poor Man’s WiFi” ? (exemplo | imagem)

A clara vantagem, é que associado ao custo em conta destes dispositivos temos a possibilidade de usar cabos usb 1 e até extensores activos, pois o sinal passa a circular exclusivamente em digital…

Poderá ser de facto muito relevante, especialmente se o utilizador final, numa rede comunitária sem fios tiver que se ligar com uma antena no telhado ou janela… pode significar muita poupança e facilidade (manuseamento de cabos usb, em vez de cabos coaxiais caros e que se podem até quebrar)…

Os projectos da Locustworld continuam a avançar. E agora o software de routing também foi compatibilizado com o VoIP SIP.

E a nova MeshBox é muito mais pequena e gira – executada com base nos Tranquil T3, com mini-itx da VIA.

Quem assim subscrever este serviço partiha os lucros do uso da sua ligação à Internet, podendo assim auferir 300 a 400 USD, pelo simples média de um ou dois utilizadores diários da rede boing e cerca de 10 novos acessos pela nossa rede. será?