The Blog
23 Jan 2004 Jeremy Zawodny's blog: My Yahoo! RSS Beta Launched
If you're a Yahoo user, you can now add RSS feeds to your MyYahoo! page. Now Ecademy generates lots of RSS so you can add Ecademy headlines to your MyYahoo! page. Just copy the link from the  glyphs and paste it into the form here. [from: JB Ecademy]O'Reilly Network: Wireless Mesh Networking [Jan. 22, 2004] is a summary and overview of open standards for mesh networking. Unfortunately it glosses over what is probably the biggest issue with Mesh, which is IP allocation to mesh nodes.
With Mesh used to provide Internet access we've introduced another layer at the edge of the network. So we have:- - Internet - ISP gateway - Mesh Nodes - Home Gateways - Home Clients The problem is how we assign IP addresses to the mesh nodes and home gateways. And we really need to do it in a global way so that when we add more nodes or merge meshes, we don't get IP number collisions. As Locustworld and others have discovered it's pretty much impossible to get a block of addresses to use. In theory, the answer is to use IPv6 but amazingly it's very difficult for a small organization or not-for-profit to get a block of IPv6 addresses. So now you're forced back into using NAT on the edge between the ISP and the mesh and using local 10.x.x.x numbers. But now there's no global control to avoid clashes and the home client is almosty certainly going to go through two NAT gateways to get to the internet. And all this is before we ever get to issues of making the mesh routing work or thnking about what business case there is for mesh in the first place. The big players like Intel and others have now started a group in the IEEE to try and come up with some Mesh standards at the Wireless level. But I don't see any evidence of people trying to solve the IP address problem. The real solution here is for IPv6 to be used at the edge and to have a clear and cheap/free method of global allocation. Then we can go back to the idea of everything connected to the Internet being globally addressable and get rid of NAT once and for all. just don't hold your breath! [from: JB Wifi] 22 Jan 2004 Findory.com News: Personalized News is a very curious site. It's as close as anything I've seen yet to "The Daily Me". It adjusts the list of articles shown according to which articles you click on to "read more". All this is done without a login and via a tracking cookie, although yu can login so that you can use the site at multiple or public computers.
My concern is that inevitably it doesn't yet have a wide enough set of sources; it's quite US biased; and sport=basketball. Now if I could just get this via RSS... [Updated to add] The parent website, is Memigo. They do something very similar (the databases may be linked) and have customised RSS feeds. [from: JB Ecademy] [ 22-Jan-04 1:43pm ] Has anyone got experience of hooking a Linksys/Netgear/Belkin Router-AP-Hub to BT Broadband? I'm curious to know what problems you had, where you got your ADSL->Ethernet modem and how you coped with BT's authentication (PPPOA?). [from: JB Wifi]
[ 22-Jan-04 1:42pm ] I seem to be repeatedly hearing people asking how to get a bit more range from their home access point or needing to get through a couple more walls in an old house. So here's a post about the simplest possible solution.
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/Ez-10/ Simple antenna enhancers that you can make with card, scissors, foil and glue (not to mention sticky back plastic or detergent bottles). They're easy to make and they work. Stick these on your access point and the client laptops will get better signal. [from: JB Wifi] [ 22-Jan-04 1:42pm ] 16 Jan 2004 Yes! Another get your war on.
www.mnftiu.cc | get your war on | page thirty "You know, I remember when I was worried the war in Iraq would distract us from rebuilding Afghanistan. (Thank god I was wrong about that!). Today I literally asked myself, Are we gonna get distracted from rebuilding Iraq, because of our mission to Mars?" [from: JB Ecademy] [ 16-Jan-04 9:10am ] 15 Jan 2004 Contrast
Wired News: Britain Steps Up (anti)Piracy Campaign The British music industry will sue Internet song swappers unless they stop putting their music collection online for others to download, a top British music official said Tuesday. with UK album sales 'reach new high' : Album sales in the UK rose by 7.6% in 2003 to a record high, fuelled by falling CD prices - in spite of piracy fears, according to an industry report. and DRM: who needs it? UK label stands up for its customers Pioneer British electronic label Warp Records has struck a blow for computers users by making its entire back catalog available for download - unencumbered by the toxic DRM restrictions that the pigopolists insist on. The Sheffield label carries quite some commercial clout, as it's home to international draws such as The Aphex Twin, LFO, Boards of Canada, and the band currently topping US college station charts, Broadcast. Quick. Sue your customers. That'll work.  [from: JB Ecademy] [ 15-Jan-04 3:40pm ] So what happens when the Internet meets grass roots politics? In the UK? And which political party is going to start an internet driven grass roots campaign in the next UK election?
Steven ("Emergence") Johnson on Emergent Politics Can the World Wide Web give ordinary people a shot at true populism New UK Political party dotcom YourParty A BBC experiment in participation BBC's iCAN beta The official experiment in participation The Big Conversation How did your MP vote? Public Whip Get your MPs attention FaxYourMP.com Inventing new, cheap ways to involve the populace mySociety The MySociety Blog VoxPolitics. Dean For American UK Ex-Pats http://www.deanforamerica.org.uk/> And of course, Dean For America Official site Not to mention, The EcademyForDean club References Rodcorp Doc Searls [from: JB Ecademy] After £25m costs, ministers click off UK Online
The research shows that far from turning to the internet in their droves and using technology to improve productivity, Britain’s small and medium-sized businesses are “clicking off.” What's a little curious about this is their definition of "Use the internet". So how should SMEs be exploiting the internet? [from: JB Beyond Bricks] 13 Jan 2004 Has anyone else used the more advanced features of the Amazon UK Recommendation system? In theory you should be able to go to your recommendations, mark that you own items and rate them. In theory, items that are marked as owned then get removed from the list and the list is updated with the new information. This has certainly worked in the past as I went though the books system and had to mark 40 books before it started recommending things I didn't own.
For the last few weeks however, it looks like the "Save" and "I Own it" buttons don't work. No matter how many times I tell it I own something and rate it, the item never disappears from the list. It's as though there's a back end database problem and my responses are not being saved. So I reported this through the Amazon help system and got a stock reply that just quotes their help about how to use recommendations. So I replied telling them to read my words and got more stock help text. I've now gone round this cycle 6 times. I tell them exactly what the problem is, I get an apparently personalised response that just repeats text out of the help. Judging by the names on the emails, Amazon.co.uk have outsourced their support system to India. Which leads me to another corrolary of Clarke's Law. "Any sufficiently stupid help desk is indistinguishable from a robot" [from: JB Ecademy] New Media Knowledge - Selling Social Software event presentations are on line. There's also some links to blog entries from both presenters and participants.
Worth reading if you follow this space. I'm also glad to see that we got a mention and that wikis and blogs were covered and not just Friendster. [from: JB Ecademy] 09 Jan 2004 What other Business (and social) networks do you belong to? I'm mostly interested in offline groups, though online are of interest too. Have you encouraged people to join Ecademy when you've been to one of their meetings?
So far we've got the following. Can you add to them? 160characters About Entrepreneurs Aurora Women's Network BOOBnight (Bring Our Own Beer) BNI BRE Brint Business Link London Businesslink CAIM (for Cambridge Business School Alumni only) CassCreatives CityZone Chambers of Commerce Chartered Institue of Marketing Chinwag - UKNM Chinwag - UKWireless Classmates.com CMI Communities of Practice Yahoo Group Company of Friends/Fast Company Digital Eve Digital People e-consultancy Enterprise Network Alliance Everywoman Fashion Capital Financial Mail Women's Forum First Tuesday FreepintIOD FriendsReunited Freshminds FSB Girlguiding UK Homeworking.com IOD Last Wednesday Of The Month Magenta Circle Maxmedia Communications Mindstore Netimperative New Business (Business Forum) New Business Voice Online Facilitation Yahoo Group Ryze Six Degrees Network SmallBusiness.com SpeedNetworking Sullivan Executive Sunday Times Enterprise Network Teleworkers Association These4walls TopConsultant UK Business Forums w2forum Webmaster World WIT (Women in Technology - eg BRITWIT) Women in Management WIM Dorset YEO "Young Entrepreneurs Organisation" [from: JB Ecademy] [ 09-Jan-04 6:10pm ] Flight Sim enquiry raises terror alert
A mother's enquiry about buying Microsoft Flight Simulator for her ten-year-old son prompted a night-time visit to her home from a state trooper... ...At one time it was rare to find US citizens, in the safest and most prosperous country in the world, jumping at their own shadows. Now we only note how high. What with the terror alerts, biometric passports, fingerprinting, incarceration of foreign journalists, air marshalls, end of Visa waivers, and so on, I don't think I'll be going to the USA again. [from: JB Ecademy] 08 Jan 2004 BT Openzone - Wireless Broadband : BT CALLS ON WI-FI INDUSTRY TO JOIN FORCES FOR FIRST FREE NATIONWIDE WIRELESS BROADBAND WEEK
BT today called on other wi-fi operators to join forces and support the UK's first-ever Wireless Broadband Week early next year. Between January 26 and February 1 2004, anyone with a wi-fi enabled laptop or PDA will be able to register online with BT Openzone and enjoy wireless broadband without time limits for a week free of charge.1 Which sounds good. If Openzone sites were free during this week that would be a good thing. And maybe we can get T-Mobile and the other operators to join in. Except that there appears to be a catch. This offer applies to existing and new users for seven days from January 26, 2004. Users will be able to access BT Openzone free of charge for a duration of seven days from registration during Wireless Broadband Week. For example, if a new user registers for an account on February 1, 2004, access will be free for seven days from the date of registration. So I assume that this doesn't apply to people who buy a pre-pay hour voucher for £6 or a day voucher for £15 or who simply turn up to an Openzone site and want to try them out. It's really a free week trial for new Openzone subscribers, in which case why limit it to just the last 7 days of Jan? Of course, if I've read this wrong, perhaps BT could enlighten us? Also covered here. [from: JB Wifi] [ 08-Jan-04 2:40pm ] 07 Jan 2004 This just turned up on wrt54g@yahoogroups.com
OpenWrt is a fully open source project for the WRT54G. Read about the project goals here: http://openwrt.sourceforge.net .[from: JB Wifi] 06 Jan 2004 4pm GMT is Ecademy Tea Time. Get yourself a cup of tea, a couple of biscuits and join Ecademy Chat or click on irc://irc.freenode.net/ecademy [from: JB Ecademy]
[ 06-Jan-04 2:10pm ] 02 Jan 2004 I've just come across a message on the MeshAP mailing list asking for ideas for applications to run on community WiFi networks. In this context, a community WiFi network is anything from 2 houses linking their WiFi together to a full blown multiple AP mesh across a whole village or town. What we're looking for here is something beyond simple internet access.
Here's a few ideas, has anyone got any more? The key here is to think in terms of what happens when a large group of households are connected at LAN speeds to each other rather than simply connected to the Internet. We're looking for apps that take advantage of the 10-100 times greater bandwidth of LAN speeds over Internet speeds. - Local VoIP. When your key friends are on the same LAN, why use the phone? - Burstable bandwidth. Aggregate together the bandwidth of all the Internet connections on the mesh. If you need to download a Linux distribution, you can get a full 20Mbps download for 10 minutes. With some bandwidth shaping this would be transparent and wouldn't affect everyone else. Perhaps it could be scheduled. - Local multi-user gaming. All the houses in one street can play Unreal Tournament at LAN speeds. - Peer to Peer backup or a local Backup service. Everybody is bad at backup. Run a community backup service with a big tape jukebox for a minimal fee. The really cool way to do this would be to distribute the backups across spare disk space on all the connected machines with enough crypto to secure it and enough redundancy so you could retrieve your data even if most of the machines were temporarily down. - Run a community News server. This is really just internet technology but there's some benefits from running internet systems that are only locally available. - Local web proxy servers. Retrieve web pages at local speeds. - Hook up some big printers for high volume, high quality printing. Perhaps the local copy shop could offer this as a service. - Media Servers. We're heading into dangerous territory here! But what happens when music and content are shared but only available on the local LAN. Instead of walking round to my friend's house to borrow a CD I just connect to her shared music folder. Stream whatever's playing on your stereo so that it's not just the next door neighbour who complains about your taste in music. Perhaps the local Video library shop could start streaming 2 or 3 videos. - High speed web cams all round the village. A real Neighbourhood watch. [from: JB Wifi] 30 Dec 2003 Another legal question I'm afraid.
How much responsibility does the owner of the wireless LAN have for damage done by one user to another? The typical possibility here is that one guest user has a Windows virus that damages the disk of network shares it finds. It attacks the unsecured laptop of the second user who mistakenly left a windows network share in place. To step this up a bit more, make the first user a hacker who deliberately (or by accident) damages the disk of a second user. Common sense says that the Wifi lan owner is an innocent party in all this and couldn't do much about it anyway. It's been suggested to me that if you're running a deliberately open WLAN (in a cafe say) you need not just some T&Cs and preferably a signature from your users but also to put in the sort of high end WiFi gear that can completely isolate each incoming user. Now we're talking about wireless here so there are limits but I understand that this sort of gear can prevent normal TCP/IP and UDP connections between wireless LAN users. If this is a real legal requirement in the UK, EU and USA (say), that means that building your own little WLAN for your customers just got significantly more expensive. [from: JB Wifi] [ 30-Dec-03 5:10pm ] Technology Review: MIT's Magazine of Innovation : Another Open Wireless Network (mine) gets closed
This story is from a serious computer security consultant (Simson Garfinkel is the author of O'Reilly's PGP : Pretty Good Privacy, Practical Unix and Internet Security and numerous other articles on information security) who was deliberately running an unsecured Apple Airport. His next door neighbour's son was connecting to it, running Kazaa and caught a Windows virus. His ISP threatened to cut him off due to the virus and he runs the risk of being sued by the RIAA (this was all in the USA). Having studied the logs, and diagnosed what was actually happening, he's now put in some serious security. Some thoughts:- - This makes me really sad. I really want to see a world where there is more or less free, more or less open internet connectivity everywhere. But this requires a certain level of trust. We're seeing more and more reasons from government regs to ISP T&Cs to the RIAA, to the proliferation of spam, viruses, worms and trojans where we have to prove we're not at fault are guilty until proven innocent. - At a rough guess, 98% of the consumer grade WiFi routers out there are installed with default wide open settings. Somebody somewhere is going to get burned. As Cryptonomicron puts it. Do you really want to be the legal test case that determines whether the "someone else was using my WiFi network," is a valid defense? - This stuff is hard. It's hard to properly secure a WiFi network and with the current tools may not even be possible without additional firewall hardware. It's also damn hard to diagnose what's happening and what happened. We're going to see and hear more of this. [from: JB Wifi] [ 30-Dec-03 5:10pm ] Can anyone help build a list of UK broadband providers who don't mind end users sharing their bandwidth with guests. The target market is both SMEs (coffee shop, pub) and private individuals.
What's the real story on the current UK legal situation. If a coffee shop or pub (ie commercial) shares access with their guests are they really a provider who has to keep logs and satisfy all the other ISP regs? How about a private individual? [from: JB Wifi] 
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