Information Research Weblog

Thursday is the Online supplement day for the Guardian and today much of it is devoted to gaming and games machines - a thoroughly boring topic from my point of view. I've never seen the sense of spending hours trying kill one alien after another. Still, it takes all kinds to populate the world. Among the more interesting items:

Flaws in Wi-fi

'Hot' source blogs

UK 'competition' in broadband.

Is VoIP in or out? No sooner do we have commentators suggesting that VoIP won't hack it in the real world than we have companies with so many subscribers that they can reduce the monthly charge. This is the case with the US supplier Vonage, which, with 150,000 subscribers on the books, feels it can cut its monthly charge from $35 to $30 - it figures to cut again when it hits 450,000

"Wi-Fi pioneer Cometa Networks will announce today that it is suspending operations following a failure to raise additional capital needed to expand its service nationwide in the US."

From CNET news

Broadband again - in Thursday's Guardian Online, Victor Keegan pointed out that while Britain has wonderful, DSL-provided "broadband" running at half a meg, France has announced a programme which will start in Paris and roll out to the rest of the country - but twelve times faster. At 6Mb, customers will be able to have streaming video and Web-delivered films whenever they are prepared to pay for it. Does the government in the UK believe the hype or are they desperate to persuade the citizen to believe it?

Meanwhile, broadband is said to be set to boom in the USA.

Internet and taxes - it seems that the US Senate is determined to encourage Internet growth. It has just voted 93 to 3 to continue the ban on taxing Internet access for another four years. However:

McCain's successful compromise measure includes specific language that attempts to ensure nothing in the bill will affect state and local taxation of voice telecommunications services, VoIP, or other telecom services that are not purchased or used directly to provide Internet access.

Wi-fi in Westminster? - a story in The Register got me interested, but it turns out to be less exciting than it promised. Westminster City Council is to extend its Soho test to cover the whole of Soho - for its own purposes, however, not for general public access. That means wi-fi CCTV cameras instead of the wired kind and other Council applications; eventually.

A kind of Weblog is produced by the "Wi-Fi Guy", who appears to be travelling around the USA, discovering the state of wi-fi connectivity. Now that's what I call a true nerd!

Denmark takes the bacon: according to a survey by IBM and The Economist, Denmark is the leading country for Internet use. The top rankings are:

1. Denmark
2. United Kingdom
3. Sweden
4. Norway
5. Finland
6. USA

George takes an interest: in what you are doing on the Internet. ZDNet reports in FBI wants to watch you type, that that service would love to wiretap the Internet -

The FBI is trying to convince the government to mandate that providers of broadband, Internet telephony, and instant-messaging services build in backdoors for easy wiretapping.

Welcome to the police state!

Do we call it a wireless or a radio?

VoIP for real? I see that AT&T is determined to become the biggest provider of telephony through VoIP - it seems to be making a strong start with services operating in California, New Jersey, New York, Texas and Massachusetts.

Since getting broadband and connecting my computer to the hi-fi system, I've been enjoying Internet Radio - the sound quality is excellent and technical hitches are infrequent. I'm using the RealAudio free media player, rather than the Windows Media Player, since I find the latter rather unfriendly to work with. People complain about the difficulty of finding the free download on the Read Audio site, but you can get a copy quite easily by going to the BBC help page. Not that I've got anything against Real Audio making money by selling the 'professional' version - good luck to them in their battle to survive the Microsoft juggernaut.

My exploration of the Internet airwaves is far from complete, but some favourites are:

• BBC Radio 3 - for its classical concerts and related programmes and for its jazz and 'world music' programmes, like those of Andy Kershaw.
• Hober - continuous music with only the occasional 'station identification' message - usually whispered :-). Comes from Takoma Park, Maryland and sent out by what seems to be a Web design, hosting, etc. firm, for the benefit of those who want something to listen to while they do computer work. Folk, 'world music', etc.
• Grassy Hill Radio - linked from Hober - folk music old and new. Like Hober, continuous music. The big advantage of these stations, apart from the music, is the lack of inane chat that bedevils the usual DJ programme.
• Prairie Home Companion - the famed Garrison Keillor radio programme - wonderful archive of complete shows, nicely split into sections if you want that.

Let me have your recommendations and I'll post them on the log.

The Google news alerts are an excellent source of information on all kinds of things. I have two running at the moment; one for VoIP and the other for developments in wi-fi. Some items from the former may interest others:

One wonders if the powerful communications industry in the USA will actually allow this one to happen: "Legislation was unveiled Friday that would classify voice over Internet Protocol as an information service, releasing it from telecommunications regulation." (RCR Wireless News)

I mentioned Skype some time ago: here is a less than totally enthusiastice review from SFGate.com:

Trying it out, I found Skype to be a simple to use service that felt more like an instant messenger program with a strong integrated voice-over-Internet protocol functionality. But it's no substitute for a telephone.

And, finally, a useful account of what's going on from The Mercury News.

There's so much hype and counter-hype that it's difficult to figure out what the future may hold: my guess, FWIW, it that VoIP is on a roll and that the world of telephony is in for a revolution - a technological optimist would probably say two years, a telecomms exec. would probably hope for fifteen before it hits, so eight to ten years is probably a reasonable estimate for the time by which VoIP will have a significant share (say 30%?) of the market.

It's just what you've always wanted, isn't it? Instead of peering over the shoulders of those in front for a distant view of the in-flight film, you've always wanted Web access - instead of trying to drift off to sleep while crushed in your seat by the back of the seat in front and the extremely large gentleman on the aisle. At least he's supposed to be on the aisle, but he has a better view out of the window than you. Now it is consolation time - wi-fi in the sky.

The wires are buzzing with stuff about mobity and wireless. From IntelliSync comes the story of CeBIT in Hannover, with news of developments in wireless and VoIP - one intersting fact caught my attention:

U.S. long-distance calls cost 20 to 30 cents a minute. VoIP, at 3 to 5 cents, offers Americans a big saving. But that price is barely less than some German phone companies charge for regular calls nowadays, thanks to healthy competition.

However - what of international calls? It can hardly be said that competition in the mobile phone market has done much to bring down the cost of 'roaming'.

From the same source, there's a report on a survey carried out by the industry magazine, Computing, with the support of the mobile phone company, O2. The brief report concludes that,

IT managers do not believe a mobile data strategy is important for their organisations.

However, of those who had implemented any kind of mobile strategy at all (192 respondents), 76 per cent said that having a strategy was 'fairly' or 'very' valuable.

And in terms of investment, on the estimates of the survey's respondents, about 12 per cent of IT budget is ploughed into mobile technology of one sort or another.

A VNUnet.com report looks at the extent to which IT directors are taking mobility and wireless on board as part of their strategy - most regard laptops as legitimately 'company business', but are reluctant to view PDAs and smartphones in the same category.

An interesting item on wireless in the public library from LIS News.com

...and a longer piece on IT in public libraries from D-Lib Magazine

Turning to the University sector, I picked this up from Seb's Open Research - a couple of courses at Prince Edward Island University are using Weblogs as resource pages and communication. Here's one on 'Networking, knowledge and the digital age'.

And here's an interesting one! I initiated a debate on the JESSE list some time back on the extent to which Web citation was beginning to overtake journal citation as a performance tool. I then found that this had been picked up by a couple of researchers (Vaughan and Shaw, Bibliographic and Web citations: what is the difference? JASIST, 54(14), 2003, 1313-1322) and now ISI is getting together with NEC: Thomson ISI and NEC Team Up to Index Web-based Scholarship

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON & PRINCETON, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2004--Today, Thomson ISI and NEC Laboratories America (NEC) announced their collaboration to create a comprehensive, multidisciplinary citation index for Web-based scholarly resources. The new Web Citation Index(TM) will combine a suite of technologies developed by NEC, including "autonomous citation indexing" tools from NEC's CiteSeer environment, with the capabilities underlying ISI Web of Knowledge(SM). Thomson ISI editors will carefully monitor the quality of this new resource to ensure all indexed material meets the Thomson ISI high-quality standards.

During 2004, Thomson ISI and NEC will operate a pilot of the new resource to receive feedback from the scientific and scholarly community. Full access to the index is projected for early 2005.

When fully operational, the new resource will be a unique content collection within ISI Web of Knowledge. It will complement the Thomson ISI Web of Science®, and provide researchers with a new gateway to discovery -- using citation relationships among Web-based documents, such as pre-prints, proceedings, and "open access" research publications

OK - that's enough for now - I've got to go off to talk with the people at Orange about mobile technologies.

WiMAX is actually an industry consortium, but its name has become shorthand for the standard it is promoting - IEEE 802.16 - for broadband wireless access. It comes to notice today because of trials by the BBC, which Yahoo! News reports as follows:

Four radio-broadband trials being conducted by BT in rural parts of the UK could be the prelude to a full-scale deployment of WiMax in Britain.

These trials involve broadband fixed access, with customers attaching a receiver to their houses, but the telco is very interested in the idea that more advanced versions of WiMax will support high-speed mobile broadband.

Ian Robinson, head of emerging products at BT Retail, said: "If the potential benefits of WiMax, such as voice services and portability, are realised, then there might be a case for rolling out a WiMax service more widely."

Here are three headlines from Computer Weekly, one after the other on the side-bar:

• Wi-Fi is ready for the enterprise, says Cisco
• Cisco warns of wireless security hole
• Wi-Fi still has a way to go, warns former Intel exec

Mmm. Let's look a little further:

• Wi-Fi is ready for the enterprise, says Cisco
  
  Consumers have been quicker to adopt wireless Lans than enterprises, but issues holding back enterprise adoption have been solved, clearing the way for businesses to hop on the Wlan train, a Cisco Systems executive said yesterday.
• Cisco warns of wireless security hole
  
  Cisco Systems has warned customers using its Aironet wireless access points about a security vulnerability that could allow attackers to obtain keys used to secure communications on wireless networks.
• Wi-Fi still has a way to go, warns former Intel exec
  
  Suppliers of wireless Lan equipment must work much harder to make their products more user friendly and to improve security features, a former Intel executive said yesterday.

So that's clear, then.

Apparently the day is coming when you will be able to take your laptop into a British public library and log on to the Internet through a wi-fi connection - this according to Stephen Timms the Minister for E-commerce. Amazing, isn't it, that a Minister can imagine that this is a novel development, when libraries in a number of countries already provide that possibility. UK governments since 1979 have been so far behind the curve in relation to braodband implementation that they are meeting it coming the other way. I often refer to Ian Mackintosh's 'Sunrise Europe', published in 1986, which set out a broadband strategy for the whole of Europe - had that been implemented, Europe would have had a broadband service similar to that of South Korea and e-commerce would certainly have been a bigger factor in the economy. But the politicians sat on their hands, business was not interested, and the European development money went into pointless projects that have wasted millions. Hey, ho, that's politics.

Broadband Britain is in the news again - this being Thursday and the Guardian Online supplement being out. Online has a couple of items on the subject. In the first, Paul Rubens reports on the problems of access in rural areas, and the currently available alternatives to ADSL and cable, which are only available in the more populated areas. The alternatives, of course, boil down to one - wireless, either from a mast on the land or from a satellite and both are more costly than the typical ADSL charge.

The other article is on the problems of getting wireless connection if you live in a difficult location, even in a city. Martin Wainwright lives in Leeds - he is the Guardian's northern editor - and he reports on the survey being undertaken by one of the wireless providers. Line of sight is the key issue - if you have it, connection is straightforward, if you haven't it's a problem. Wainwright is going to have to end up with a 2.5 metre pole strapped to the chimney of his Victorian house. Not quite as problematical as another customer who, "connects with a mast through his house walls, both main stands at Leeds United's Elland Road stadium and a hill"

An interesting account of Forrester's predictions for broadband in Europe, which puts Britain in the second tier, behind the Nordic countries and the Netherlands. The reason? Cost, of course - and that is down to BT's continuing assumption that you make more money by charging fewer people more, rather than charging a lot of people less. They'll never learn!

Long live Mozilla? With AOL's abandonment of Netscape, and the laying-off of fifty Netscape coders, it looked as though Mozilla would also go down the plug hole. Apparently not. Up rises the 'Mozilla Foundation'. Elsewhere, doubt is cast on the ability of the new Foundation to make much of a dent in IE's dominance. However, as always, time will tell.

Browsing around that last topic brought me to another Weblog, which has a couple of interesting short notes on Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firebird browser. The author, Joel Spolsky, suggests that Firebird meets all of his browser requirements and, with a download of only 6.8 Mb, it's worth taking a look at. I shall report later.

Teleworking has been around a long time as a concept, but the numbers of people who can be defined as teleworkers has never seemed to grow sufficiently to fulfil the promise - mainly, it seems, because people like the social interaction that work brings. However, that may be due to change - a report from AT&T reports that 80% of companies survey now say that they have people who regularly work away from the office. 'Working away' means at least 20% of the time - which I guess means that every senior manager and every salesman is a teleworker. A more rigorous definition of, say, 75% of a person's time, would clearly knock that overall proportion down a bit. On that basis, I'd claim to be largely a teleworker these days. AT&T's press kit also includes Ten Telework Tips.

This from the BBC's technology news:

A group of internet enthusiasts have given a new meaning to the expression of surfing on the beach.

They have set up a wireless network in the English seaside town of Brighton so that you can browse the web or read your e-mails while you soak up the sunshine.

The service, called PiertoPier, is being offered free to anyone who has the right gear and relies on volunteers and donations to keep it alive.

Given the sunshine in the UK at present, this is clearly the way to go. However, I have yet to meet the laptop that can cope with such sunshine!

"Research Firm Says Wi-Fi Will Go Bye-Bye" is the headline of a story from 802.11 Planet to the effect that wi-fi using the 802.11b standard is likely to give way to "ultra-wide band" (UWB). UWB is known in the USA as the "garage door spectrum" and is used for garage door openers, portable telephones and baby monitors. Its advantages over 802.11b are low power requirements, higher bandwith and that walls and partitions don't affect it.

And I've just installed a home wi-fi network! Well - it will be at least five years before UWB comes along so...

A fascinating article in today's Online supplement to the Guardian (or the Grauniad as Private Eye insists on calling it - although I think its propensity for typos has diminished in recent years). The topic is 'software radio' - i.e.:

Instead of specialist radio hardware, a software radio uses a simple receiver to throw the entire contents of a range of frequencies into computer memory, where software - and not hardware - does the signal processing. Vanu Inc, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took an ordinary, off-the-shelf Hewlett-Packard iPaq personal digital assistant and, using only a simple radio receiver and an upgrade to the Linux operating system, was able to demonstrate the device working as an FM radio.

That should make a hole in the market for electronic radio components!

An earlier item in the log drew attention to the MyZones idea of having communities of wi-fi users, with people drawing on their neighbours connections.

The idea gets a boost in New York, with the suggestion (on 802.11 Planet) that the city is not making the maximum use of its big fibre network. Wireless networking for the 'last mile' could change things.

An item on the BBC technology news site gives a new meaning to the word 'community' in its report on a start-up wireless broadband outfit. MyZones is fostering the idea that anyone with a wireless home network can offer access to the Internet to their neighbours.

A nice idea in some ways, but I imagine that, if the idea spreads, it could degrade performance on whatever ISP network one was using.

Wi-Fi Networking News points to Bill Drew's Wireless Librarian page, which, in turn, points to his world-wide list of libraries with wi-fi capabilities. The only one in the UK on his list is at Richmond on Thames, but I couldn't actually find anything specifically about Wi-fi at the Web site.

It's a little ironic, given my entry yesterday, to find on the BBC news service today, comments from BT to the effect that the government should be doing more to promote broadband in rural areas!

See: BT urges action on rural broadband

Clearly BT as a commercial organization instead of in its former role as a state monopoly, is unlikely to be able to fund rural broadband, so it is looking to the government for help. Curious, isn't it, how the proponents of the market system run for help when the going is difficult :-)

If the UK government does take action, I hope it will be in installing wireless broadband connection, which makes much more sense in rural areas than helping BT to lay more telephone cable - it's more environmentally friendly and it introduces more competition - surely good for the market?

So you think that your 802.11 home wireless network you have is pretty limited?

No so, apparently. A California company has come up with modifications to the standard to enable site to site communication over a distance of up to ten miles (sixteen kilometers). According to Adam Stone, writing in 802.11 Planet the system has been implemented in a California local authority and is being expanded to cover the entire city.

The economics are certainly getting interesting!

From the BBC comes a report of a KPMG study of 'war driving' - hacking into wireless networks for free Internet access.

As I'll be installing a home wireless network shortly, I think that I need to look out information on encryption - the number of companies that have no protection on their wireless LANs is astonishing!

I'm off to Amsterdam tomorrow, to give a presentation on The Nonsense of Knowledge Management at the University of Amsterdam, and I'm unlikely to be Weblogging while I'm there - so, unless someone would like to step in and post something (why so reluctant, folks?), there'll be a short pause.

Checking on one of the Weblogs I peruse from time to time, I found a pointer to the Google Weblog. Needless to say, this is not an official Google site, but one that posts news and criticism about the search engine. It included an item about the Google Zeitgeist, which is an official Google site, reporting such things as the top ten queries, languages used, and so on. 'Google Trivia' might be a better name and I found it rather depressing that Warhol ranks 4th in searches for artists - on the other hand, it could have been Tracey Emin.

The more persistent observer of this Weblog has probably noticed the 'Links and Weblogs' element in the Navigation box. I'm building this up because the Bookmarks box is for my eyes only (I think - perhaps members of the user group can see it too?). Well - in any event - I jot down sites and Weblogs I come across and, in the course of doing so, found myself directed to Blogstreet, which is a directory/search engine devoted to Weblogs and which compiles data on links among such sites. Search for a topic - say, "wireless internet" - and it identifies Weblogs that cover that topic, at least to some extent. For example, Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log. This was at the top of the search results. Click on the small link labelled 'Neighborhood' (pity about the spelling) and you are presented with a list of Weblogs that deal (approximately) with the same things. There's also a neighbourhood map - but that didn't work on my browser (Mozilla). Clever stuff.

The Guardian's Online supplement is back on the track of WiFi today. In an article headed, "The Coffee Connection" Neil McIntosh looks at the spread of wireless connection in coffee shops and other places and especially at the spread of WiFi in rural areas where BT's broadband and cable services are not available. He comments:

Wilson [no relation to this Wilson - I think] does not blame BT for failing to bring broadband to rural communities, but wants to see the company using the technology as a creative solution to the problem of getting faster internet access outside large towns and cities.

Any bets on BT seizing the high ground? Or even the low-lands?

A correspondent from the state of Washington tells me that King County Public Library has installed wireless internet connectivity in its larger branches. She notes:

The connection reaches outside one of the libraries, so patrons have discovered they can connect to the Internet from their cars (I'm assuming they still go inside the library to use the washroom).

I've tried to locate more information on the Web about the King County system, but without success. If anyone has found anything, please post it.

Here's a link to King County Library System wireless access: http://www.kcls.org/about/wireless.cfm

I forgot to add to the last entry that 802.11b clearly has significant implications for organizations as well as communities. Public libraries, for example, could provide wireless internet connection within the walls of their central libraries and perhaps, money and other things allowing, their branch libraries. The same goes for university libraries, student unions, halls of residence, and individual departments.

In fact Apple already promote their AirPort Extreme, which can serve 50 users at a time. And, at the end of last year, Bell Canada announced that it was converting payphone sites in Montreal and Toronto into wireless access points. The press release notes that libraries have expressed an interest in the system and that analysts suggest that their will be a $9.5 billion market by 2007.

As usual, there are early adopters around: the University of Texas at Arlington has wireless connectivity in its Central Library, Architecture & Fine Arts Library, and Science & Engineering Library as does Hofstra University School of Law [whenever I read about Hofstra I can't help thinking of Bill Cosby's famous story about playing football (American) for Temple and coming up agains the Hofstra team - hilarious], and Library Journal reported last October on three public libraries providing wireless internet access in Virginia, Indiana and Florida.

Keep abreast of things via the 80211b Weblog - and start preparing a paper on the subject for Information Research!

In my entry about 'Smart mobs' I mentioned Howard Rheingold's enthusiasm for wireless networks. The subject crops up again today on the front page of the Guardian's Online supplement and, of course, on its Web site. As usual, of course, our sainted telecomms company, BT, is busy shooting itself in the foot by rolling out its wireless access points as alternatives to 3G telephony instead of as an alternative to its own, much slower, broadband service (11Mbs against 0.5Mbs) - charging £85.00 a month means that it is targeting mobile business users, rather than the masses. The usual story from BT - it never seems to understand (even under new management) that volume from the masses leads to higher income than high rates for the few. So - someone else, probably one of the mobile 'phone companies, will cut the ground from under their feet. This is how it got into a mess last time round, so what's the betting that another CEO is going to be parachuted in in, say, three years' time?

The same issue has a shorter article about the necessary technology for a home wireless network - Spin a Wi-Fi web in your home, which enables the use of a single broadband connection by more than one computer at the same time. Useful for families with teenagers sqabbling over who gets 'on the computer' next for their homework. The featured product is from BT, but you can bet that there'll be others in the market almost immediately. The author, Jack Scholfield, draws attention to some of the glitches that can occur with Wi-Fi, if you haven't got completely compatible hardware.

The subject also crops up on Slashdot.org, drawing attention to an article in Wired News. Chiming in with my comments on BT, the articles notes:

With just five MeshBoxes, the tiny municipality of Kingsbridge, Devon, in western England, was able to provide broadband access to the citizens who live in the center of town. A group of enthusiasts eventually wants to provide all 5,000 of the town's residents with wireless broadband.

Frustrated with British Telecommunications' slow progress in wiring the town with DSL, two members of the Kingsbridge Link project took charge. They purchased the MeshBoxes for around $2,400, and strategically placed them in the center of town.

The boxes piggyback off a single broadband pipeline owned by one of the local businesses and distribute bandwidth to the residents who tap into the network.

I was able to finish reading Howard Rheingold's 'Smart Mobs' (a review will appear in Information Research in April) while going to and from Torun - January is NOT a good time for travel in Europe! A Smart Mob can also be described as a 'mobile impromptu social network' - a MISoNet perhaps and the idea occurred to HR when he observed the behaviour of mobile (cell) 'phone users in Tokyo. He builds on this idea to postulate a future in which mobile telephony and mobile, wearable computing will enable the impromptu information sharing that results from network creation. He also looks at the implications for new wireless technology for rural communities and urban neighbourhoods, in providing access to the Net, and at the continuing battle between technology developers and the entrenched interests of commerce. In all, a good read, with many ideas to stimulate one's own. Check out the Web site.

Tom

Getting to grips with this new IRWeblog is quite a business! I think I need a techie in charge here. :-)

However, my purpose is not to deal with Weblogs, fascinating though the subject may be, but to share some thoughts about a book. In this case, "Smart mobs: the next social revolution" by Howard Rheingold - well known in the Internet world for his other books, perhaps most famously for "The virtual community".

I'm only part way through reviewing it for Information Research, but this log is supposed to be about stuff like this, so I thought I would share it. My impression, I realised yesterday, is that it has the air of a kind of travel guide - for people thinking of a trip to the future.

The main message is that the combination of the Web and mobile telephony will bring about major social change - and there is some support for the idea in the existence of groups campaigning for social change (the anti-globalisation groups, for example) which have used mobile telephony (mobiles in the UK, cell-phones in the USA) to organize themselves during demonstrations. However, the main use appears to be to set up dates through texting (aided in Japan by the existence of Web-based dating services), or otherwise aiding (or abetting) social communication of various kinds.

Frankly, I regard them as a pain in the bum - I carry one for emergencies and I think that is their key function, but the clamour of mobiles on the street, and in trains is a nuisance. They also contribute significantly to information (or communication) overload - some business people daren't even switch the damn things off when they go on holiday. In fact, in one organization we found one person who took holidays in Nepal and Peru to avoid getting a signal - but kept her mobile 'on'.

The writing style is somewhat breathless - the author rushes around from place to place, scattering famous names all over the place - but it is readable. Not un-put-downable, but readable.

Anyone else reading it?

Tom