Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining …

New York Senate Telecom Committee Is on the Phone

Earlier this month, I glued together two neat apps using parts supplied by two different VoiceXML unified communications companies. The first lets me call in to a VoXMLPHP script hosted by Tropo, which then interprets my voice commands and reads news articles using their API wrappers.  The  second sends SMS headlines (using Twilio’s APIs) from my favorite news sources to my not-so-smart-phone (it’s an ancient model).

Both have their place in my work schedule.  Another idea that’s been taking root in this blog is crowdsourcing of public policy  and moving government documents to the Internet, accessible using open-standards protocols (RSS, et. al.)

Hold these thoughts.

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Answering David Pogue's Cable Puzzler

Last week David Pogue, The New York Times technology reporter, was perplexed (in a good way) that his local cable company, Cablevision, had been setting up free WiFi hotspots during the last year in the tri-state area (NY,NJ, CT).   Pogue’s been delighted that Optimum WiFi has been showing up with greater frequency on his menu bar for whatever gadget he’s currently holding.  He’s not sure why CableVision is doing this.

(Glad to hear it , David.  I’m not getting the same WiFi love from Comcast, my “information service” provider, who seems more reserved in dispensing her wireless gifts.)

But wait there’s more. Pogue said that Comcast, Cablevision, and Time Warner have formed a partnership that will begin letting subscribers roam between WiFi networks for free.

Wow.

Pogue asked his loyal readers (count me as one) to explain why three competitors have joined together.  I think I have a partial answer.Continue reading

Gov 2.0: Unified Communications Meets Social Networking

Were you distracted by iPad mania and overlook this year’s Emerging Communications Conference that was held this week in San Francisco?  I did.  eComm is the successor to the short lived  O’Reilly  eTel conference. The talks and presentations all looked quite tasty, and I’m hoping videos will be made public soon.

In any case, I  stumbled across a slide deck delivered at eComm by electronic government evangelist Mark Headd. (Check out Mark’s excellent blog, Vox Populi.) In it he describes a few practical projects involving on-line government docs, cloud-based telephony, and crowdsourcing-social networking, areas that I’ve been focusing on recently.Continue reading

Perusing Apple’s quarterly earnings and commentary, I am almost moved to tears. This is unusual, I know, to feel the romance of strategy and long-term …

Telecommunications By Any Other Name….

I’d like to put aside, permanently, the debate about the correct classification of cable service, which has been argued in the courts for years.  In fact,  the underlying question—what is digital communications—has been endlessly and unproductively analyzed in legal and regulatory areas since the 1970s.   The classification question during the disco era,  is it basic or is it enhanced service?, is still with us in the iPad age in the form of,  is it telecommunication or  information?

To me, the bigger issue is why making the right choice from the FCC’s categorization menu—telecommunications, information services, advanced services, advanced services with telecommunications (DSL),  advanced services minus telecommunications (cable modem), etc. —has become the only way to impose non-trivial obligations on carrier and service providers.Continue reading

Tropo Puts Unified Communications in the Cloud

About a year ago, VoiceXML pioneer Voxeo started a cloud-based unified communications service called Tropo.  It’s a tempting free development environment in which you craft unified communications apps in your favorite web programming language without having to wade too deeply into VoXML tags and voice grammars. The words “free”, “development environment”, and “VoiceXML” struck the right note with me.Continue reading

Ancillary Authority, Estoppel Gotchas, and New Statutes

I had two shots of espresso and then  tackled  a few parts of the U.S. Court of Appeals decision favoring Comcast.   I am an  informed technologist with no legal training.   It does appear to this blogger that the FCC’s case was—sigh—very weak.

In navigating this legalistic obstacle course and trying to unravel the thinking of a a generation of technology challenged attorneys, you are forced to make the unlikeliest of associations. First, telecommunications means voice and cable TV, but not data.  Data is called information services, and voice can be an information service when it is VoIP.  (Hmm, not sure I want to know how the FCC viewed the phone systems’ digital TDM protocols.)

And then voice has something like cooties, and can contaminate the data part, turning it into telecommunications. Follow?Continue reading

Civilization Gets More Organized

An internet pundit wrote a much linked to piece of punditry about how complexity overwhelmed the administrative powers of a few past civilizations, thereby leading to their eventual demise. Last night at a NY Tech Meetup I was feeling incredibly optimistic about the prospects of our own  society.

What’s one of the most vexing problem faced by many Manhattanites? Finding a cab would probably come in pretty close to the top—finding a cab in the rain, a little higher.

So I was starry eyed at a demo of a new iPhone app (which has received media attention recently) called CabSense.

Using GPS data collected by the  New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, AI-machine learning researchers were able to discern patterns in what I  always thought was a random walk.  The result was a mobile  app  that taps into this dataset  and reports back a nearby street corner where you are likeliest to get a cab.

CabsSense (brought to you by start-up Sense Networks) was one of several demos I witnessed last night that in my mind were all connected by a deeper theme.Continue reading

iPad:Birth of New Device Genre

I saw the iPad last night for the first time at Apple’s SoHo store in Manhattan. It is an amazing thing. A bit of futuristic Star Trek-level technology that found its way into the year 2010:  a large-size  tricorder with great video.  (And to think that Spock struggled with that mouseless gadget!).

I watched a few videos (smooth, fluid ), tried one of the book readers (seductive),  and was wowed by a  location-sensitive astronomy app called Star Walk.

It is not a smaller this or a larger that. I remember similar dismissive talk about mini-computers and personal computers. It’s a new genre of touch-sensitive, location-aware multimedia gagdets that will create its own uses—many that we can not even conceive of at this point. With the Epicurious app, I already see the beginnings of a whole new market of kitchen countertop  virtual cookbooks.  If they can just hook in speech rec….Continue reading

Pricing a Broadband Bit

In 2008, Comcast, my internet service provider, instituted broadband caps, setting a  250 Giga byte monthly limit. Time Warner started a trial program that year as well, which has since become standard practice in more cities (Rochester, Greensboro, San Antonio).

Well, how do I do know how much I’m using, so I don’t go over the cap and face the consequences?

Comcast solved that problem (at least in my area)  last week with a usage meter. I now know that I consumed 10 Gigabits last month, which works out in my situation to over $6/Gb.Continue reading