greenpoint design

The Future of Mobile Communications?

Among the major mobile networks in this country only Sprint is investing in WiMax. Industry pundits, like Kim Hart in the Washington Post, have cast the move as an act of desperation, but it may turn out to be the next big step forward for mobile communications.

Currently the implementation of so-called 3G services with mobile devices leaves a lot to be desired. Anybody who has ever tried to download a music file directly to their mobile, or browse a web page on their Treo, knows that the experience is reminiscent of the old World Wide Wait as accessed through a 14.4 modem. Using the predominant CDMA networks, it amounts to the same thing: digital information from the web has to be rebroadcast over the cellular network before it can be received by mobile devices.

This is backwards. There’s only one network now: the internet. Locking devices to privately owned cellnets actually impedes the flow of information. Sprint’s move to WiMax is a bold step toward uniting mobile communications with the rest of the net. If it succeeds, carriers like Sprint will see a dramatic decline in operating costs and consumers may finally get mobile communications at a reasonable price.

Google’s announcement two weeks ago that it would support Sprint’s WiMax venture lent some net cred to the whole project. It also suggests that Google may be looking to end-run big telcos, like AT&T, who have been lobbying to institute pay-to-play internet access (see earlier Network Neutrality rants) .

All this remains to be seen, but the Sprint-Google WiMax project presents some interesting possibilities for the future of mobile communications.

FCC Receives Feedback on Net Neutrality

Grant Gross at PC World reports that the FCC has closed the comment period for feedback on the topic of net neutrality. Apparently the communications commission has heard quite a bit from the internet rank and file since the comment period was opened in March.

Voters are still waiting hear what Congress will do to guarantee net neutrality, since the FCC is unlikely to rule against telecoms. Without a legislative directive, the FCC could easily allow the existing common carriage rules to be eroded in a series of quiet administrative decisions. If that happened, the net would be a very different place.

Congress needs to take action to ensure that we all have equal access to the net. Take a few minutes to write your representatives to let them know what you think. Save The Internet, one of many coalitions that has formed to defend net neutrality, has set up a handy-dandy Congressional spammer that makes it really easy to reach out and touch your Congress people. And isn’t that what the net is for?

Refined Design

Sometimes a tool comes along that’s so elegantly simple you just have to admire it. The developers and designers at Air New Zealand refined the point of this web app to a single question: ‘How far can I go?’ The answer is realized with dollar slider and a map.

Details below routes and costs are provided so intuitively that instructions are not needed. Overall, it’s an excellent example of a first-rate information application.

Transparently Google

Yesterday Google launched what might be their biggest innovation since the search algorithm — the Google Public Policy Blog.

Many large companies have public policy, or government relations, departments. The goals and operations of such departments are typically only known to a handful of top executives and the board of the company. So Google’s airing of boardroom debates is unusual to say the least.

Cynics may say that it’s just more spin and PR. Perhaps, but what if it were an honest record of corporate goals and values? That would be a big step toward transparency in a democracy so heavily influenced by corporate money.

The blog also has a lucid assessment of Network Neutrality penned by a lobbyist named Richard Whitt. It’s good that Google has made its position clear; it would be great to see the telecoms do the same.

Gone 403

Sorry we were offline for about six weeks. It looks like the server got hacked. Until I could sit down for  a day to sort it out, I locked the permissions down. That’s why you were getting 403 errors.

I’m going to reinforce the security on my end. There have been a number of PHP/MySQL exploits in the past months, which could account for the intrusion. Or my host’s security is just slack.

If it happens again, CID will be moving to a new host.