News: Tech's newest trend--decentralization : COMMENTARY--What's the connection between Wi-Fi wireless networks, Weblogs and Web services? They are among the few technologies thriving amid the industrywide downturn. What's more, they are examples of the trend toward decentralization.

In the coming decade, decentralization will be the critical challenge for the technology, media and telecommunications industries. Each has developed with the assumption that powerful central forces will manage development. Enterprise IT has "big iron" servers and monolithic software applications; communications has carriers investing in huge infrastructure build-outs; and media has content owners controlling distributions channels.

These approaches are under siege--and not because there's a New Economy, or because information deserves to be free, or because of any fluctuation in the stock market. Centralized systems are failing for two simple reasons: They can't scale, and they don't reflect the real world of people. (my emphasis)

An unusually accurate and reasonable article from ZDNet and spot on. This is a drum (among many) that I've been banging for a while now. Perhaps we should be talking about the "End of Big" along with the "End of Free"! [from: JB Ecademy]

Some advice both for conference organisers and speakers for exploiting WiFi at conferences.Wireless LANs: Tips for Speakers

So has Olympia, Excel, and Earls Court got WiFi as part of the conference package? [from: JB Ecademy]

Nice example of convergence. NEC Ships New Wireless Projectors [thanks, 802.11 Planet] Still expensive but it solves a common problem where the projector lead isn't long enough to reach the laptop where you want to stand. [from: JB Wifi]

In reaction to the DCMA a Declaration of Rights - Digital Technology Users. This may also be a touchstone to see which side of the fence people sit on as some of the Rights are quite contentious. [from: JB Ecademy]

A bunch of people working on getting some Californian tree sitters online via WiFi. Anarchogeek: Getting Tree-Sit's online Some of them have been up a redwood for > 4 months. Once they're online, the plan is to start a Tree-sit blog.

The anarcho-geek site has a lot of other interesting stuff mostly about various anarchic ventures particularly involving recycling old computers for the third world. I found it via a new mailing list about Group-forming networks. The Anarchogeek himself has posted a long article that touches on many subjects but is largely about the issues of trust and credibility in community news sites from the perspective of his own experience with Indymedia. (see also Indymedia UK). [from: JB Ecademy]

The co-creator of MasterCard has created a micropayment system that support amounts down to $0.02. [thanks, Boing Boing Blog] [from: JB Ecademy]

The killer app for Broadband is...

Voice!

Check out Vonage DigitalVoice. Here's a service that provides a small ethernet to POTS box. Plug one side into your ADSL-Cable modem or local ethernet. Plug a bog standard phone into the other. And then make free, cheap or flat rate calls to anywhere. (Inevitably it's US only at present)

There's a convergence here that again is highly disruptive to the established order. We're seeing phones, cellphones, PDAs, IP, WiFi, Bluetooth and ubiquitous internet access converge into a classic TelHead vs Nethead battle where everything runs over IP and is available for a flat monthly subscription with no per minute, per Gb, per mile charges. [from: JB Ecademy]

Shannon Clark asked a series of questions so here's a quick FAQ that attempts to answer them. I guess the first answer is STFW, dude! The answers are all out there via Google, DMOZ and others. Anyway. On with the questions and answers.

What, exactly, is the purpose of having an RSS feed?
RSS is a really simple syndication XML format that provides Title, Link and Abstract for items on a website. This is so useful that Syndic8.com catalogues >10,000 sites that produce RSS. It typically has two uses on the client side. 1) Compiling a customized view of news in a website, such as DailENews at Ecademy. 2) making it easy for an individual to track and read large numbers of websites in a desktop application. See my (a bit old) RSS FAQ, The DMOZ RSS entry, all the little orange XML icons on this page and in DailENews, and for desktop readers: Radio, Amphetadesk, Newzcrawler  

Second, what does "Movable Type" do/not do that Blogger does/does not do?
If Blogs are a really easy way to publish on the web in a way that usually displays the results in reverse time sequence, then the next thing you need is a system to manage and enter the items. You could do it by handcoding html in notepad, but there are easier ways.

Blogger and Livejournal take a hosted centralized approach where the management system is a website, although the final blog might be hosted somewhere else and uploaded via ftp. Blogger also provides free web space in blogspot. Movable Type is a set of perl scripts that you put on your own website to provide the management system so it's abit more de-centralized. There are numerous alternatives that are more or less powerful in other languages including C++, Java, Python and PHP. Then we have desktop based management systems like Radio that then upload all the text somewhere else. The different systems give you different amounts of control and ease and are more or less dependent on other people. If you have no technical skill at all, then Blogger or Livejournal are probably easiest. If you can manage a perl based website, then Movable Type is probably your best bet. This is further confused because most of these have an XMLRPC web service interface and people have produced desktop applications that work with this.

Third, I see a lot of weblogs with links lists on the left and right elements
This is commonly called Blogrolling. The lists are of weblogs and websites you read regularly, websites that link to you, websites that people have clicked on to get to you (referrers), Websites with RSS that you read, websites that have information close to your speciality or whatever. This all started as hand coded lists, but increasingly people are coding ways of making this happen automatically. Like Blogrolling.com.

Fourth, how does stuff like "Blogdex" work?
Blogdex, Daypop, and one or two others all do something similar. They read a large number of websites relatively frequently and then try and draw conclusions about what they see. Mostly the focus is watching the meta activity of the blog world. So Blogdex tries to see what stories lots of bloggers are talking about at any one time based on what URL the stories link to. As the amass a large amount of data in the procvess, there's lots of opportunity to mine this data and turn up interesting information in the archives. See also weblogs.com and blo.gs

Re the problems with links, have a look for trackback for Movable type. I've found that both Google and Alexa are not very good at tracking fast moving links between websites. Google is indexing Ecademy, and catching some of the links but I'm absolutely certain that we've got more links to us than they show.

Fifth, And, while I like this site as well, this really should be duplicated on my own site
One or two other people are grappling with the same problem. My approach is to grab the RSS from my blog here and insert it into my blog over there. I also access both blogs from  a desktop I wrote myself that uses the XMLRPC interface. And then I have a bookmarklet in Internet Explorer that adds a right click menu option to blog to Voidstar, Ecademy and Ecademy WiFi. (What's new and then 19 April) [from: JB Ecademy]

Wi-Fi+ Blogs+Conferences hits The Grauniad MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | New adventures in Wi-Fi [from: JB Ecademy]

B3ta does it again with the "Internet Simulator"

Keep an eye on Grokker from Groxis and Find Tools coming for connecting information. Dan Gillmor. But we need more sophisticated methods for gathering, massaging and making connections among all the pieces of information that enter our lives each day -- everything from e-mail to Web pages to phone numbers and more. So when I see useful tools, I pay attention. [thanks, Tomalak's Realm] 

Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log : : Smart City Telecom offers free WiFi in Walt Disney town Celebration, Fla. to DSL customers Interesting approach by an ADSL broadband vendor. Sign up to "Home'n'Roam and as well as the home Broadband access you also get free WiFi access at participating outlets. This particular company is heavily involved in WiFI and supplies systems for conferences so they already have the tech. But they're putting hotspots into public space around their ADSL coverage area. They've also got an enlightened attitude to allowing their ADSL subscribers to install WiFi themselves with cheap hardware from the same company.

This seems like a natural for BT. I wonder if their terms of reference allow them to cross subsidize Openworld with OpenZone? I also think this a natural for widening the coverage of OpenZone by having a franchise model where low performance access is available from customers who share their ADSL.

An email I have received suggested that I'm spending too much time knocking Microsoft and supporting Open Source. So:-

Question: Do you think I support Microsoft or Open Source?

The answer actually tells me much more about you than about me. I have been very careful to sit on the fence in the middle as I don't actually have a strong opinion either way. But I do have a tendency to take opposing stances in arguments and to poke fun at hubris and stupidity. So when talking to Microsoft supporters I'll point out that there's lots of good work being done outside Microsoft and especially in the Open source area and they really ought to take a look. When talking to Open Source fanatics (and all too often they are fanatical to the point of being rabid) I'll point out that we live in a Microsoft world and actually Microsoft is churning out vast quantities of pretty good code and they really ought to take a look.

So the answer is actually both and neither. I use and have used a large amount of Microsoft software and although I occasionally curse it, it's done me proud. I also use and have used a large amount of open source software both on MS operating systems and on Linux. And it's generally served me well, although all too often the documentation is obscure and hard to understand.

So if you're a Microsoft person and think that I'm firmly in the Open Source camp because I complain about the wilder absurdities of both MS and MS software, you're wrong. And if you think I'm firmly in the Microsoft camp because I complain that Linux and Linux software is too damn hard, you're also wrong.

An email I have received suggested that I'm spending too much time knocking Microsoft and supporting Open Source. So:-

Question: Do you think I support Microsoft or Open Source?

The answer actually tells me much more about you than about me. I have been very careful to sit on the fence in the middle as I don't actually have a strong opinion either way. But I do have a tendency to take opposing stances in arguments and to poke fun at hubris and stupidity. So when talking to Microsoft supporters I'll point out that there's lots of good work being done outside Microsoft and especially in the Open source area and they really ought to take a look. When talking to Open Source fanatics (and all too often they are fanatical to the point of being rabid) I'll point out that we live in a Microsoft world and actually Microsoft is churning out vast quantities of pretty good code and they really ought to take a look.

So the answer is actually both and neither. I use and have used a large amount of Microsoft software and although I occasionally curse it, it's done me proud. I also use and have used a large amount of open source software both on MS operating systems and on Linux. And it's generally served me well, although all too often the documentation is obscure and hard to understand.

So if you're a Microsoft person and think that I'm firmly in the Open Source camp because I complain about the wilder absurdities of both MS and MS software, you're wrong. And if you think I'm firmly in the Microsoft camp because I complain that Linux and Linux software is too damn hard, you're also wrong.

CustomerRespect.com: "[T]he report found that 37 percent of Fortune 100 companies offered no reply to a general inquiry submitted to their Web site, despite offering either an online form or email contact details for inquiries." [thanks, Werblog]

The cluetrain stopped at their station, but nobody got on.

Samizdata.net - Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002 Beautiful, ironic but somewhat scary posters have started appearing in London produced by London Transport. "Secure beneath the watchful eyes". "CCTV and Metropolitan police on buses are just two ways we're making your journey more secure". The poster has been so well done that concensus is that it's a subtle joke at London transport's expense by the graphic artist. However if you find the levels of surveillance in the UK scary, then you'll like Wired's article on "Routes of least surveillance" and this article on blinding CCTV cameras with a laser pointer. You'll probably also want to support Captain Gatso and his campaign to neutralize Gatso speed cameras with paint and tyre/petrol necklaces.

From the "how do they do that" desk; Googlism.

As I'm far too intelligent for my own good :) I've always been tickled by one of those stupid statistics. "50% of all people are of below average intelligence."! So then we get to what that actually means in terms of IQ scores in which an IQ of 100 is supposedly average. The stupidest person in my school had an IQ of 110 and I remember just how stupid they were. At Cambridge I guess the stupidest were more like 125 or 130 and some of them could be pretty dumb despite that.

So what are we to make of the story doing the rounds and reported by John Simpson on the BBC; that Clinton has an IQ of 186 and George Dubya Bush has an IQ of 91. Shurely Shome Mishtake! Because if it's true, it's too scary to contemplate. Although Clinton's score undoubtedly proves that the attribute with the biggest sex appeal is intelligence.

Wonderful rant on 10 rules of e-business failure aimed directly at the entertainment industry and more specifically the record industry.

BTW Kazaa Lite V2 is here. Not that I'd suggest you use it or anything.