We just hosted an online chat with wireless consultant Craig Mathias, principal of Farpoint Group, and a regular blogger and Clear Choice Test whiz for "Network World."
The chat covered questions on range of stuff, including stopping rogue access points, improving connection speeds, and multivendor support issues. You can find the transcript online.
Craig's blog, Nearpoints, also is featured at our Wireless Tech Center.
Now that the Palin Hotmail Hack has had its 15-minutes or so of notoriety we can revisit something much more interesting, and important: the Obama campaign's use of social networking and mobility to smother critics.
This is change you can believe in.
In a 17 September Chicago Tribune story, reporter John McCormick reported about the Obama Action Wire, which is based on the campaign's database of millions of Obama suporters. "Now Obama's presidential campaign is increasingly using the list to beat back media messages it does not like, calling on supporters to flood radio and television stations when those opposed to him run anti-Obama ads or appear on talk shows," according to McCormick.
Days before the story appeared, the Action Wire made itself felt: the campaign "orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned WGN-AM in Chicago when the radio station hosted author David Freddoso, who has written a controversial book about the Illinois Democrat."
According to the story, the McCain campaign, which like its rival uses the Internet for fund-raising and organizing, has nothing remotely like this.
The Tribune story has the official campaign take on Action Wire: "The Action Wire serves as a means of arming our supporters with the facts to take on those who spread lies about Barack Obama and respond forcefully with the truth, whether it's an author passing off fiction as biography, a Web site spreading baseless conspiracy theories or a TV station airing an ad that makes demonstrably false claims," said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt.
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MIT researchers and a Massachusetts company are devising a forest fire-sensing network that draws its power from the minute amounts of electricity created by trees.
The idea is to seed large areas of forest with temperature and humidity sensors, linked via a ZigBee 802.15.4 wireless mesh to a satellite node and powered by rechargeable batteries. The batteries can slowly be recharged by the electric current found in a tree.
In a striking analogy one fo the researchers likened this trickle charge to a "dripping faucet [that] can fill a bucket over time." The system produces enough power to allow the sensors to upload data 4 times daily, or in case of a fire, immediately. The mesh passes the signal from node to node until it reaches a U.S. Forest Service remote automated weather station, equipped with a satellite data link. The information then funnels inot a command center in Boise, Idaho.
One challenge the researchers had to overcome was figuring out exactly how trees generated the miniscule voltage. They eliminated several possibilities, including one well-known phenomenon: the simple electrochemical redox reactions, the kind that power potatoe or lemon "batteries" in high school science projects.
The conclusion, reported recently in "Public Library of Science ONE," is that the current is created by a pH imbalance between the tree and the soil it grows in. The tests were run with a potted Ficus benjamina in a Faraday cage.
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The future of the Web is 3-D, not video, according to former "Network Worlder" Ian Lamont, who now oversees editorial content for our sister site, The Industry Standard.
Lamont's blog entry, based on an earlier graduate course paper, was sparked by YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley's recent post about his company's long-term strategy. Hurley argues that video will dominate the Web.
Lamont argues, effectively, that it will not. Instead, an emerging cluster of graphics technologies will enable a highly interactive 3-D Web, which will affect content creation and "consumption" in new ways. He says that video is essentially unchanged after more than half-a-century as a static and linear [the two Great Evils for new media boosters) technology, with its roots in an even older and static and linear technology -- film.
That's certainly true of YouTube, which is essentially a library of film clips, an historical record, though it can be pretty recent history, just hours old.
I think he's right, though I disagree with a number of details. Video, with TV broadcasting, created something that is still powerful and a fundemental part of today's Internet character: the immediate witness to an unfolding story. "Live from New York" or Washington or, today, your own neighborhood, or a fishing village on the Chilean coast. Radio creates that in words; video, and especially live video, adds images.
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So by now, Everyone knows Senator John McCain invented the BlackBerry. Or that he says he did. Or that someone on his campaign says he did, which is practically the same thing. This is politics after all.
The "NY Times" has a pretty thorough account -- including CONTEXT! -- of what unfolded earlier today when McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin was talking to reporters about the senator's ideas on the financial turmoil on Wall Street. According to the Times, the advisor was asked what McCain had done on the commerce committee that would show Americans he understands financial markets.
Holtz-Eakin pointed out first that McCain didn't have jurisdiction over financial markets. Then, according to the Times, he went on: “But he did this," he said, holding up what looked like a BlackBerry. “The telecommunications of the United States, the premier innovation of the past 15 years, comes right through the commerce committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create. And that’s what he did."
Assuming this is accurate, any fair reading would be that Holtz-Eakin was using his smartphone as a kind of symbol or emblem to summarize the "creative destruction" we've witnessed in telecommunications for a decade and a half. "He did this" refers not to McCain tinkering with a CPU and ROM chips and some fancy software programming, but to his basic orientation toward markets, and probably (presumably) to specific, relevant bills that McCain sponsored or voted for.
I'm not a student of McCain's commerce committee tenure, so I can't say if the aid's claim is really justified.
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Research in Motion captured almost 54% of the U.S. smartphone market for the second quarter of 2008, according to IDC's latest data.
That was a big jump in market share -- almost 10 percentage points -- from the first quarter, and the gain came at the expense of Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Palm, both of which lost market share.
RIM has been on a roll with strong growth in smartphone sales fueling blazing revenue and profits. The company shipped nearly 5.4 million devices in its first fiscal quarter this year.
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An iPhone 3G customer has filed the second lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over the popular phone. This one, by William J. Gillis Jr., was filed in San Diego, California and charges that the two companies deliberately misrepresented what users could expect in terms of 3G connectivity and performance, according to blogger Justin McLachlan who first broke the news on Tuesday.
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Engadget Mobile has some details of this month's scheduled launch of the Sprint-Clearwire Xohm WiMAX launch.
The details were dug up by an Engadet fan, named Leo, who was able to do some exploring of what was said to be Sprint's MyXohm Website (which apparently is no longer showing up).
Many of the pages and links were simply placeholders or filler text, but according to Engadget the site said that the Xohm mobile WiMAX service will deliver 2-4Mbps for downloads and 1-3Mbps for uploads.
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Researchers are trying to apply ideas drawn from biological systems to computer systems, specifically to wireless sensor networks.
The work is being done by European-based WINSOC, for Wireless Sensor Networks with Self-Organization. The main idea being explored is somethng called self-synchronization: the concept that individual cells, or in this case sensor nodes, can share bits of information to coordinate actions.
(ZDNet blogger Roland Piquepaille has an overview of the project, and a group of related links.)
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Gizmodo's Kit Eaton is bent out of shape over a document that is allegedly a set of Verizon talking points criticizing the iPhone, which in the U.S. runs only on the 3G cellular network of Verizon rival AT&T Wireless.
You can tell Kit is bent out of shape because he uses the word "propaganda" to describe a marketing data sheet. He seems upset that Verizon is debunking iPhone "myths" that have less to do with the iPhone per se and more with the iPhone service provided by AT&T.
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Apparently some iPhone 3G users are underwhelmed by the "phone" part of the iPhone, according to two different stories at BusinessWeek.com, both of which finger Infineon's embedded Infineon cellular chip as the reason.
The most recent story, on 14 August, by Peter Burrows, cites two unnamed but "well-placed" sources pointing to the Infineon chip. Their claim "reinforces" an August 12 assertion by stock market researcher Richard Windsor of Nomura Securities, who says the chip is the cause of the problems.
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Last weekend, a federal judge issued an injunction blocking some MIT students from explaining to a Defcon audience how to hack the RFID-based fare card system used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation System (MBTA).
In one account, one student said he was now "afraid."
Good.
Judging from what I've read, that seems to be the minority view.
My colleague Adam Gaffin pointed out the MIT students included a lengthy list of all the ways you can hack the system without any equipment at all, apparently not even a jimmy: walking through unattended fare gates; unprotected and even unlocked network switch rooms; and so on.
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Our Microsoft Subnet has a case study about a New Hampshire company, Globe Manufacturing, that has enthusiastically embraced Windows Mobile 6.0 for its employees on the move.
That link brings you to part 2 of the story (focusing on Windows Mobile and the Samsung SCH-i760 smartphone used by Globe). In part 1, Julie looked at Globe's decision to opt for a Linux-based email system, PostPath, but Microsoft Outlook as its email/contacts client.
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Yesterday's U.S. Department of Justice indictment ought to come as a relief to the TJX, the Massachusetts-based retailer who's been the corporate whipping boy for slack wireless security for nearly three years.
That's because it's now evident that TJX isn't the only security screwup in retail.
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Two of our Cisco Subnet bloggers, Jim Doherty and Neil Anderson, have what I think is an intriguing blogpost: "The end of the Road Warrior".
Their argument is that the nature of mobility is changing, and therefore changing the skills needed to work successfully, and the nature of that work. Initially, mobile workers were swashbuckling power-users, focused on getting connected while traveling to meet coworkers or customers.
(Our ace security reporter Ellen Messmer has a new story up on a report about telecommuting security and productivity issues, and how they're being ignored.)
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I've been reading a MG Siegler post at VentureBeat about how the 140-character Twitter messages (called tweets) began flooding through the Twittersphere within seconds of this week's earthquake, many of them generated by mobile users with cell phones; about how the Associated Press took 9 entire minutes before posting its first story about what had happened; and about how this is yet another "powerful reminder of Twitter's potential."
Potential for what, exactly?
Here is the first tweet on the L.A. earthquake, sent in its entirety, by "Vixy": earthquake
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Motorola is acquiring privately held AirDefense, a wireless intrusion prevention vendor, to strengthen security for its wireless LAN product line.
The deal, expected to be finalized in a few months, gives Motorola’s enterprise division a well-regarded wireless intrusion prevention system (IPS), which uses radio sensors and software that detect, classify, locate, and block connections between enterprise WLAN access points and clients and unauthorized wireless devices. AirDefense will continue to be based in Alpharetta, Georgia but organizationally will be part of Motorola’s Enterprise Mobility Division.
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Another group of "prominent" doctors and public health researchers have issued the latest warning that cell phone use possibly might increase the chances you get brain cancer.
One of them, Dr. Ronald Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, went so far as to write a memo to 3,000 faculty and staff encouraging them to use cell phones less, to keep them as far from their head as possible, and only let children use them in emergencies.
Good luck with that.
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People are ga-ga over San Francisco's plan to install wireless sensors at 6,000 metered parking spaces (about one-quarter of the city's total), alerting drivers whenever one becomes open.
Some smart guy probably figured, "hey, we can do this for finding the nearest Starbucks, why not parking spaces?"
I'm finally getting around to this, because I read one too many wide-eyed admiring account of this scheme. Surely, the flaws should be obvious.
The sensors register when a car leaves the space, and upload that information to a server, which will then alert drivers to the vacancy via electric street signs, or maps on their cell phone screens. And you might even be able to pay for the space from that same cell phone!
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The average number of daily users on Philadelphia's troubled municipal Wi-Fi net has nearly tripled since a group of private investors took it over just weeks ago.
The local story on the Metro.US site says the number of daily users has jumped from about 6,000 to 17,000. But it doesn't go into any detail, and the timeframe is so short, so it's hard to know what the increase actually means.
The numbers could reflect an increase in the number of people trying out the service. The real question is whether they'll keep using it, and for what. Okay, that's two questions.
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In researching this week's story on the new generation of mobile Web browsers, one word kept coming up to describe the experience of both users and IT staff: painful.
(There's also a slideshow with screen shots from several of these browsers.)
Microbrowsers were often awkward to use and limited in the content they could access, and the content had to be separately created and maintained. Someone aptly dubbed mobile browsers as "second class citizens" on the Internet.
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As the 3G iPhone Saga continues to unfold, I find myself wondering less "who's in charge" and more "is anyone in charge?"
With 3rd party iPhone applications now all the rage, one group that's emerging are offerings from VoIP providers. Those would be the guys who want you to make a VoIP call instead of a call over AT&T's 3G cell network, which is the only US network where iPhone currently works.
AT&T isn't too worried though, according to Dan Frommer at "Silicon Valley Insider." One reason, he says, is that Apple will only approve iPhone apps that make VoIP calls over a Wi-Fi connection, not over the cell network. (Frommer may not be correct, though: more on this in a moment.)
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Next week, the FCC will launch a second test, this time in the field, of prototype wireless devices that run in the “white spaces” of the unlicensed television broadcast band.
And through an FCC filing, the NFL and ESPN invited the commission to test these white space devices (WSDs) in football fields: during 2008-09 games at the Baltimore Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium and the Washington Redskins’ FedExField in Landover, Maryland.
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A CNET story this week says that the Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors is suing a Dutch university to block publication of a paper that publicly details potential security flaws in the company’s widely-used Mifare Classic contactless smartcard.
A hearing is scheduled for today (10 July) in a Dutch court.
The headline, alas, is typical of these stories: "Dutch chipmaker sues to silence security researchers." With a headline like that, you don't even have to read the story to know what it says and what you're supposed to think about it.
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Sprint today showed it's pretty serious about its Xohm Mobile WiMAX network: it picked DragonWave as its microwave backhaul supplier.
DragonWave's native Ethernet radios, in this case the Horizon Compact and Horizon Duo products, will be deployed in the first two Xohm sites, Baltimore/Washington and Chicago.
The Duo was unveiled earlier this year: 1.6Gbps microwave Ethernet radio. With the Horizon Compact, they fill the air gap between base stations and next-level aggregation sites or fiber points of presence.
The contract isn't exclusive and Sprint will undoubtedly use other vendors so it's not dependent on a single supplier.
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A startup called BillShrink has an online tool for analyzing your calling patterns and matching them to the various consumer service plans AT&T Wireless is offering for the iPhone, which goes on sale this Friday.
As you can see from the Web page, you select or enter data about your current plan, such as the number of Anytime minutes you use, your current monthly bill, number of text messages, and so on.
The program then searches and ranks the best plans for your useage pattern. The results give you the plan name, plan details, how much more or less you'll be paying yearly compared to your current plan, and lets you compared selected plans.
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ScienceDaily has picked up on a new report that documents flaws in the wireless and wired barcode systems increasingly used to match the right patient with the right dose of the right drug.
The full report is in the current Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). The study was designed to examine when, how and why nurses sidestep (or "workaround") the limitations of these systems, which typically include handheld scanners, barcodes on patients and drugs, a wireless networks, and interfaces to other patient care applications.
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Cisco and Nivis this week demonstrated an operational wireless IP mesh network using the low-power IPv6 protocol, dubbed 6LoWPAN.
Using Nivis wireless sensors and routers, the demonstration network linked a parking meter with several streetlights, a sensor ring in a parking space, and what was described as a Cisco cell phone. The arrangement was used to communicate to the driver that a parking space was available, and in another instance that the meter had expired. The same system could be used to alert security details to turn on parking garage lights, or provide traffic meter staff with information about expired or inoperable meters.
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NW's Cool Tools Editor Keith Shaw got his hands on a trio of the new mini-notebooks now starting to emerge.
You can go to his video in our video section or click on the viewer here.
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One big and so far unsung enterprise attraction for the iPhone may be that it can fully access SharePoint sites.
At least, that’s according to a couple of West Coast consultants who’ve been testing the iPhone on some SharePoint portals.
UPDATE: These portals were Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0), not repeat not the most recent Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is one of the fastest growing Microsoft enterprise applications, a document management system recast for online collaboration and, increasingly, social networking. It’s a way to get a lot more real work done, than is possible with just Exchange-based email.
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