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Category Archives: Gear
Prepping for Paris
Tomorrow we fly to Paris, where I’ll be based for the next five weeks. To help myself prep, here are a few of my notes from conversations with friends and my own inadequate research… Offbeat Guildes. Already have ours. We … Continue reading
Posted in Fun, Gear, Technology, Travel
Tagged Android, Cellular Abroad, free.fr, La Cantine, Mobiho, Nexus One, Nokia, Offbeat Guides, Orange, Paris, Tacima, wi-fi
12 Comments
An appeal for open cameras
David Siegel, author of the excellent new book Pull, shares with me an abiding frustration with all major camera makers — especially the Big Two: Canon and Nikon: they’re silos. They require lenses that work only on their cameras and … Continue reading
Posted in Future, Gear, history, Photography, problems
Tagged "Stephen Lewis", cameras, Canon, David Siegel, EOS 30D, EOS 5D, film, Nikon, Photography, Sigma, Sony, Tamron, Zeiss
13 Comments
Beyond the iPad
I was just interviewed for a BBC television feature that will run around the same time the iPad is launched. I’ll be a talking head, basically. For what it’s worth, here’s what I provided as background for where I’d be … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Fun, Future, Gear, Ideas, infrastructure, Journalism, Live Web, News, Technology, VRM
Tagged "Dave Winer", Andrew Oldyzko, Android, Apple, BBC, four party system, fourth party, iPad, Jeff Jarvis, Linux, Phil Windley, Steve Jobs, Symbian
40 Comments
Building the Information Squeezeway
Some encouraging words here about Verizon’s expected 4G data rates: After testing in the Boston and Seattle areas, the provider estimates that a real connection on a populated network should average between 5Mbps to 12Mbps in download rates and between … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Gear, history, Ideas, infrastructure, News, Places, Technology
Tagged 3G, 4G, Brett Glass, ISPs, Raleigh, regulatory capture, Sprint, verizon, WISPs
21 Comments
Up the creek without an iPaddle
In response to Dave‘s Reading tea leaves in advance of Apple’s announcements, I added this comment: Steve loves to uncork constipated categories with the world’s slickest laxative. So I’m guessing this new box will expand Apple’s retail shelf space to … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Gear, News, Quote, Technology
Tagged "Dave Winer", Amazon, Apple, Engadget, Garmin, Gizmodo, google, iPad, iphone, Joel Johnson, MG Sigler, Oreo cookie, silo, SKUs, Sony, Steve Jobs, TechCrunch, Trinitron
29 Comments
Thinking outside the Internet box
A couple days ago I responded to a posting on an email list. What I wrote struck a few chords, so I thought I’d repeat it here, with just a few edits, and then add a few additional thoughts as … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Future, Gear, Ideas, infrastructure, Past, Politics, problems, Technology
Tagged ABC, AM, Brett Glass, Broadband Politics, CBS, cloud, Erik Cecil, FM, fox, Hammarlund, Hammarlund HQ-129x, information service, internet, NBC, New Jersey, new york, Nicholas Carr, ota, PBS, projectvrm, regulatory capture, Richard Bennett, Sporadic E, telecommunication service, television, towers, uhf, utility, vhf, VRM, Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler
8 Comments
Adventures in Value Subtraction
One of the reasons I liked Dish Network (to the extent anybody can like a purely commercial entertainment utility) was that their satellite receivers included an over-the-air tuner. It nicely folded your over-the-air (OTA) stations in with others in the … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Gear, Past, problems, VRM
Tagged Dish Network, Sony, television, tv, ViP 622, ViP 722
16 Comments
Life in Cox tech support hell
Major props to Cox for cranking up my speeds to 18Mb/s downstream and 4Mb/s upstream. That totally rocks. I’m getting that speed now. Here’s what Cox’s local diagnostic tool says: TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.4.12 click START to begin Connected … Continue reading
Posted in Blogging, Business, Gear, infrastructure, problems
Tagged bandwidth, broadband, Cox, Cox Communications, customer service, downstream, tech support, upstream
19 Comments
Opening the paying field
When we went looking for an apartment here a couple years ago, we had two primary considerations in addition to the usual ones: walking distance from a Red Line subway stop, and fiber-based Internet access. The latter is easy to … Continue reading
We’re gonna need a bigger boat
WebTV was way ahead of its time and exactly backwards. The idea was to put the Web on TV. In the prevailing media framework of the time, this made complete sense. TV had been around since the Forties, and nearly … Continue reading