Mainlining Broadband, You Saw it Here First, VoIP Gathers Momentum, DSL Prices Drop: Competition? You’re Soaking In It, Stupid Name Alert

Mainlining Broadband

Well, I’m not betting that the latest monopoly to attempt to give you broadband options is going to set the world on fire. Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) has been on the verge for about as long as there’s been a broadband verge. What a great concept, though. People talk about making broadband Internet as ubiquitous as power, so who better to bring it to you than the guys who own the power lines going into your home? Unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy as it was envisioned.

Sure there are plenty of companies that will sell you gear to use the electrical wiring within your house to do networking, but going vast distances through noisy transformers and switches to connect your whole home or business to the Internet is a bit different deal.

And, sure, there may be more than a dozen trials underway in the US as Pyramid Research claims, but, holy brownout, Batman, can you imaging the electric company marketing Internet services to you? I mean, their sales approach for years has consisted of asking folks who call in two questions: “How much do you want?” and “Where do you want it?” Just because these guys have (or had) several of their own industry associations – the Power Line Communications Association (which doesn’t even appear to be in business anymore), the Universal Powerline Association), and the United Power Line Council doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly develop the ability to mount sales and marketing efforts in the highly competitive world of Internet broadband, where the options already include offerings from two other monopolies, telcos (DSL) and cablecos (cable broadband), as well as highly sales and marketing-oriented competitors like cellcos (Sprint and Verizon’s EV-DO offerings) and upstarts like fixed wireless operators (like the local Twin Cities’ Stonebridge and Implex). Add to that the fact that the technology is facing several hurdles, including complaints from licensed users of radio frequency spectrum and ham radio operators that BPL interferes with their signals. These interference claims have gotten the FCC interested in rulemaking concerning the technology – never a good sign. Ultimately, the FCC approved BPL but will be on the lookout for interference claims.

According to the FCC:

The interference concern regarding BPL operation arises from the fact that electric power lines are not shielded and therefore portions of any RF energy they may carry can be radiated.

Most Access BPL systems that are currently deployed operate in the range from 2 MHz to 50 MHz, with very low-power signals that are spread over a broad range of frequencies. These frequencies are also used by licensed radio services that must be protected from harmful interference under the Commission’s Part 15 rules for unlicensed devices. In the radio spectrum below 50 MHz, incumbent authorized radio services include fixed, land mobile, aeronautical mobile, maritime mobile, radiolocation, broadcast radio, amateur radio terrestrial and satellite, and radio-astronomy. Users of this spectrum include, for example, public safety and Federal government agencies, aeronautical navigation licensees, amateur radio operators, international broadcasting stations, and citizens band radio operators.

The deployment of broadband delivery capabilities to provide all Americans with access to affordable high speed Internet and data services is one of the most important challenges currently facing the Commission and the communications industry. [. . . ]

We believe that the widespread introduction of Access BPL service would further our goals for broadband service consistent with the challenges indicated above.

So the FCC decided to allow the development of BPL to go forward, while maintaining its rules prohibiting radio interference by unlicensed carriers. The Hams lose; the big guys win. Hmmmm. (To be fair, the Hams got all up in arms on the basis of very little objective evidence.) The BPL vendors say they will “notch out” the possibly interfering frequencies from their transmissions so everything will be cool.

Indeed, the backing of powerful companies is one of the factors in BPL’s favor. The technology is being championed by electrical utilities that have deep pockets and the ears of politicians. Just take a look at the gang of suspects supporting the FCC rulemaking effort:

• Ambient Corporation
• American Petroleum Institute
• AT&T
• APCO/NPSTC
• the CEA
• the CSAA
• Cinergy Corp.
• the City of Manassas Virginia
• Current
• Duke Energy
• Main.Net Communications
• National Telecommunications and Information Administration
• National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association
• Oncor Electric Delivery Company
• PPL Telcom LLC
• Progress Energy
• Southern, Southern Telecom, and Southern Company Services

In an example of real-world power, recently Texas State Sen. Troy Fraser got a bill passed authorizing the use of BPL in Texas, hang the possible interference problems. One of his motivations: possible competition for the cablecos. “For years, the cable industry has faced little or no competition. This bill creates a fair and balanced approach to creating additional competition in all aspects of the communications industry, which will in turn bring in billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the state,” the senator said. I like the un-ironic use of the phrase “fair and balanced” here.

Despite all this, though, apparently only a few companies have actually deployed BPL services beyond the test phase, including Broadband Horizons and CenterPoint Energy in Texas (which is teaming with IBM) and Douglas Electric Cooperative, with more than 9,000 customers in Oregon, and Manassas, Virginia, which claims to be the first operational BPL service in the US.

Broadband Horizons got some pub recently for providing free Internet to 3,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Gee, maybe Barbara Bush was right. These evacuees have it good!

But Douglas Electric Coop, an early poster child of BPM, doesn’t even list the service on its Website. In fact, many utilities that are supposedly in trials don’t have anything about BPL on their Websites, including North Carolina’s Duke Power, which is supposedly ramping up its deployment in Charlotte to 15,000 homes passed. Huh? If you were doing some leading edge development, wouldn’t you be trumpeting it on your Website? See what I mean about sales and marketing deficits?

In an interesting bit of either patronage or poaching, COMtek, which provided the BPL system for Manassas, hired the city’s former utilities director as a vice president of BPL operations soon after the system was deployed. See the big pockets political discussion above.

One of the oddest things about BPL is that some of the power companies plan to actually deliver the signal to your house or business via – wait for it – Wi-Fi! Huh? I guess the reason has to do with getting through those nasty step-down transformers in your neighborhood. But, wait, I thought this was all about solving the last-mile problem, and the copper going everywhere was a big plus for BPL. Guess not.

So if all this doesn’t make you think this is a hot trend, witness the fact that my favorite evil company, Google, has invested in Current Communications, a BPL provider which is selling BPL Internet service in the Cincinnati area.

All this buzz about a potentially new revenue source for power companies obscures the fact that there are several positive implications of BPL for the maintenance and operation of their existing physical plant. Power companies already do some rudimentary management over their wires; BPL would allow them to quickly spot blown transformers and other defective network elements, for example. In fact, I’ve been told that while testing BPL over their electrical network, at least one power company was able to predict transformer failure by measuring the device’s resistance to transferring the BPL signal.

Creating a “smart grid” with BPL technology could allow energy companies to develop services such as automated meter reading, real-time system monitoring, preventive maintenance and diagnostics, and outage detection and restoration. In fact, ConEd, the New York utility, thinks that the revenue from BPL may pay for lots of the monitoring capabilities they had been planning on funding themselves. Said a CenterPoint spokesperson, “[W]ith BPL we could see the health and status of our network down to the outlet in the home. [Ed. Note: Yikes! Turn off the grow lights, Maynard!] These smart grid technologies should result in improved system reliability and service for our electric customers.” In fact, there’s an international consortium dedicated to bringing forth the concept of an IntelliGrid in which the power network becomes capable of real-time, two-way monitoring, sensing, and control.

So what’s all this mean for consumers and businesses? Well, at the least, if power companies can grow a sales and marketing capability better than that of their fellow monopoly competitors, it could mean wide availability of a cheaper alternative for broadband access, especially in rural areas. However, despite the hype, don’t expect BPL to offer blazing speeds. Apparently, BPL throughput can range from 300Kbps to 2Mbps, about the same as most cable and DSL – I get 6Mbps from my cable installation.

Don’t hold your breath, though. I’ve been tracking this trend since 1999, and the progress has so far been glacial. Still, the future promises other potential broadband competitors, including WiMAX, EV-DO and EV-DV from the cellcos, fiber to the home, and, who knows, even blimp or aircraft-based alternatives (which I first brought to the attention of Alert SNS Readers way back in 2001). Stay tuned. The broadband wars could be heating up again.

Pyramid Research

Briefly Noted

• Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.: The WiMAX Guys’ main business is new installs for people who want to set up wireless hotspots such as hotels, warehouses, apartment buildings, and office buildings or hotzones that cover cities. We also sell a knowledge-based Web portal called the MAX K-Base. Check out our main Website at www.TheWiMAXGuys.com. My wife created a bit of a stir when her op-ed piece was published in the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper after the election. Her article, “Two Nations, Handcuffed Together,” has been commented on or linked to by more than 85 Websites. She’s now created a Website to capitalize on her newfound pundit status. Check it out at www.debellsworth.com. Many issues ago I debuted SNS Begware, an opportunity for you, gentle reader, to express your appreciation by tipping your server via PayPal. See the sidebar for more info. Total in the kitty so far: $91.48. Thanks Dave! And now that I’m partnered with one of the largest advertisers on the planet, Google, that should be kicking in serious coin to the StratVantage coffers. Let’s see. The current total is: $0.12. Great.
• The Raw File – SNS is dedicated to delivering the scoop on the latest and greatest. However, I collect lots of information that never makes it into the newsletter before it gets old. I’ve collected all this aging info into a page called The Raw File. This page is the raw information I gather for SNS articles. It’s not pretty, and some may be a little incoherent, but chances are there are still things in TRF that might be news to you. So therefore, use The Raw File at your own risk – it’s 45+ pages of the best stuff that didn’t make it into SNS. The Raw File
• You Saw it Here First: Well, at least I hope so. Palm is going over to the dark side by releasing a Treo based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 5.0 (an OS so nice they’ve named it thrice: Windows CE, PocketPC, Windows Mobile). Apparently two years in the making, this sea change doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the PalmOS, but it sure isn’t going to help the venerable handheld system, which will probably be relegated to low-end devices. Palm and Microsoft announced they will team up on a new Treo from Verizon Wireless. Palm has also made some changes in the beloved mobile OS. wanted to develop a customized version of Windows Mobile, the only smartphone vendor to do so. According to the New York Times, “Palm added interface elements like the ability to speed dial by pressing a person's photo on the screen, the ability to decline to take a call by automatically sending a message (rather than ignoring it) and the ability to go through your cellphone voice mail with on-screen icons.” The new Treo will ship early next year, running on Verizon's high-speed EV-DO network. Palm
• VoIP Gathers Momentum: You may never have heard of it, but Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is starting to heat up. The technology allows you to digitize your voice and send it over the Internet, and it’s behind efforts such as Skype (recently bought by xxxx) and Vonage (available at BestBuy). Even my favorite evil empire, Google, has gotten into the act with the recently released Google Talk. Locally in the Twin Cities, I recently attended an event sponsored by industry group The VoIP Symposium, along with a hundred other VoIP enthusiasts. The presentations from the event are being sold, believe it or not, to non-attendees for $100. If interested, send an email to matt@voipconsortium.com. Below are the highlights of the event, according to its organizers.
• VoIP is VHS/CD/MP3. TDM is Beta/8-Track/Cassette. There is no turning back. Need more evidence?
• 911/E911 is a real concern but primarily from a liability perspective. VoIP 911/E911 is no worse than TDM 911/E911 in the Enterprise.
• VoIP feature sets have long surpassed TDM feature sets.
• VoIP Business Case/ROI is multi-faceted and depends on many factors, e.g. single campus v. multi-location campus, required features, etc.
• VoIP Deployment is best done after careful planning and training.
• IP Centrex is here, has a low cost of entry and makes sense for companies with even hundreds of employees. Examples: Enventis Telecom, Onvoy, Covad.
• Moves, Adds and Changes alone can justify migrating from TDM to IP-based voice.
• VoIP Deployments are successful up to multiple thousands of seats. New records are being claimed on a monthly basis. Example: Spanlink deployed a 450-site, multi-thousand-seat Cisco-based solution for W.W. Grainger.
• The FCC delayed its 911/E911 ruling. Vonage issued a press release claiming over 99% customer feedback on 911/E911.
• Small VoIP Software Vendors are adding tremendous value in the open architecture hardware solutions of large vendors such as Cisco, Nortel and Avaya. Examples: Unimax, Aptigen. Voip Consortium
• DSL Prices Drop: Competition? You’re Soaking In It: The Baby Bells aren’t used to competition, it’s true. But they have learned a favorite trick of monopolies everywhere: When threatened, reduce the price. In the hands of the right monopoly (think Microsoft’s response to Netscape: a free Internet Explorer) such a tactic can work. But will the Bells’ recent DSL price reductions really do anything to dent the cable broadband hegemony or turn back new competitors such as wireless broadband and fiber to the home (the say-it-don’t-spray-it acronymed FTTH)? The Detroit News
• Stupid Name Alert: You think FTTH is a bad name? Dumbfind.com, a DC-based company has launched its new search engine, which it has spent more than two years developing. Dumbfind combines traditional keyword search with the ability to prioritize results based on generalized topics. The company says the site allows users to search more extensively within the topic for wanted sites and to weed out unrelated sites. “No one company should control the flow of information, no matter how good their intentions may be," said the CEO, in an obvious knock against the evil Google empire. I dunno. I must be dumb. But I couldn’t really see what the advantage was of this search engine, and there are no instructions available on their main page. Could be great. Hard to tell. YahooNews Thanks to Alert SNS Reader Jeff Ellsworth for the pointer.
• If You’ve Made it This Far: Well, there have been no more entries in our contest. As you may remember, Alert SNS Reader Ken Florian correctly identified the song containing the lyric “And I said yes sir brother sheriff, and that's your wife on the back of my horse.” You may recall that the song is indeed Gangster of Love, a song made popular by Stevie “Guitar” Miller and first appearing on his album Sailor. Miller did not, however, write the song, which was penned by Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who had a minor hit with it in 1957. My favorite other cover recording of the song is by Johnny Winter, on an obscure disk called Black Cat Bone. You may further recall the contest was to email me the retort to the partial music lyric buried somewhere in the previous newsletter. The prize was one stick of totally obsolete PC memory. Since Mr. Florian neglected to also answer the tiebreaker, “Who is Hoops McCann?” twice, he is not the winner. Frankly, I thought the tiebreaker was pretty easy, especially if you use my favorite search engine, Google. Perhaps you should try Dumbfind, and put in the names of various categories of popular entertainment until you find the two answers. So, to claim the memory, Alert SNS Readers must first answer that tiebreaker and then also tell me where I can buy the LP featuring songs containing the lyrics “nauseous gasser” and “merry-go-round” for less than $69. It’s only going to get harder unless someone can emerge victorious. Of course, buying me the LP would make one an instant winner, regardless of previous right answers!

Success has many fathers; failure has many analysts, BuzzKill, Comedy is Easy. Predicting the Future is Hard, Sweating the Small Stuff, ASP, more

Success has many fathers; failure has many analysts

Yes, that’s right. I said it. You can Google it to be sure. It’s one of my better bon mots, if I do say so.

The cool thing is, it’s undoubtedly true. Take a look at the uncharacteristically fierce journalistic bashing the Bush government is undergoing in the wake of their truly historic bungling of Katrina. Our president actually admitted a mistake, the first one of his five year administration. But let’s not go there.

We could take a look at why failure is not longer an option, and the effect of that mandate, combined with the intense scrutiny of public companies and the resulting obsession with quarterly results, on risk takers and innovation. (For a great example, see the recent stock drop of BestBuy, who only increased earnings 48 percent compared to last year and missed earnings per share forecasts by a penny.)

But let’s instead take a look at some of the predictions and hot technologies that flamed out over the last five years.

Let’s first examine predictions by the high bux analysts. Then, in a future issue, we’ll take a look at my goofs.

BuzzKill

In 2000, I ran an item that said: “IDC predicts that the current $115 Billion eSolutions Business Will Skyrocket to $430 Billion by 2004.” A search of Forrester’s site today yields zero hits for the term eSolutions. Hmmmmm. Institutional amnesia? A Google search (did I tell you how much I love Google?) turns up 1.7 million pages containing the term eSolutions, and 31,500 also contain the word billions. Unfortunately, finding the current value of the eSolutions market is not the type of thing that Web searches are good at uncovering. And a search of major industry analyst sites turn up very little on eSolutions. Let’s just say that the term eSolutions has fallen out of favor, so who knows how much the market is worth?

Conclusion: Prediction probably worthless.

Comedy is Easy. Predicting the Future is Hard

Also in 2000, I included an item under the title Rosy Technology Predictions May Be Pessimistic about a George Washington University study that pulled together a number of predictions from noted futurists. It included a statement from Wired Magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly: “The Web is underhyped.” You know, I think he was right. Also included were the following predictions, which pegged when each advance would achieve critical mass:

Prediction	Year
Entertainment On-Demand	2003
Videoconferencing	2004
PC Convergence	2005
Distance Learning	2006
Advanced Data Storage
Standard Digital Protocol
PCS Gains Markets
Groupware Systems	2007
Computer Sensory Recognition
Modular Software
Parallel Processing Computing	2008
Information Superhighway
Personal Digital Assistants
Intelligent Agents	2009
Ubiquitous Computing Environment
Broadband Networks
Electronic Banking/Cash
Expert Systems	2010

Note that some of the trends don’t have a predicted date. A curious example is “PCS Gains Markets,” referring to the expansion of digital cell phone technology, which, of course, is ubiquitous today.

Here’s George Washington U’s current thinking.

Conclusion: Prediction mixed.

Sweating the Small Stuff

One of the complaints that chip fabricators have about all this nanotechnology business is that they are already working on the nanoscale. The current Northwood Pentium 4 uses 0.13-micron (120 nanometer) transistors, for example.

Well, back in 2000, I printed an item in which Intel predicted “By 2005 we’ll see the first 30 nanometer transistors (0.03 microns). A hundred thousand of them stacked on top of each other will be the thickness of a sheet of paper. This will enable 10GHz processors that can process 20 million calculations in the time a bullet flies 1 foot.”

Hmmm. Not quite, Intel. But your competition is getting pretty close. AMD’s Opteron 275 is not only a 64-bit chip (compared with the P4’s 32-bits) but uses miniscule 0.09-micron transistors, three times larger than the predicted size.

Conclusion: Prediction busted.

ASP, Where is Thy Sting?

In an article entitled, ASPs Defying Predictions of Demise? I passed along the information that two Application Service Provider (ASP) portals gave slightly different censuses of the ASP universe: 1,870 companies vs. 1,763. Of course, both portals predicted a bright future for selling software as a service. Let’s compare these old numbers with the current numbers listed at ASPStreet and ASPNews:

Predictor	2000	2005	Difference
ASPNews	1,870	1,822	-48
ASPStreet	1,763	2,582	+819

Hmmm. The ASP market is either pretty healthy or slowly declining. You decide.

Conclusion: Prediction mixed.

Flash vs. Content

OK, this one isn’t strictly a prediction, but it’s worth revisiting. In a previous SNS, I railed about the apparent triumph of flash (little ‘f’ and big ‘F’) over content on a growing number of sites. Many sites still have Flash intros (which basically says to search engines, “Go away!” However, we’ve seen Flash be more integrated into a Website as a banner header or other page element.

Two good examples I’m intimately familiar with are the Evalubase Research site and one of The WiMAX Guys clients’ site, Uncovering Profits. The Evalubase site (done by yours truly; be kind, I’m a graphics idiot) uses three different Flash objects to add a little pizzazz. Uncovering Profits has an all-Flash main page (we got involved a little too late to prevent this), but uses a Flash navbar throughout the rest of the site.

But the most interesting thing about this particular blast from the past is the site I used as an example of the most egregious use of Flash I had seen, the Website of a company called Balthaser. If the site had been based on HTML, you could see how their site used to look courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Instead, you get a blank page.

Anyway, the company now has a pretty cool interactive design application built in Flash. It’s still not optimal, it’s all black and all in Flash, but it does get the job done. Try signing up for their free account and see how it works. The screen is still way too dark, and I missed the “Next” button during the signup phase, but, whaddaya gonna do? What do you suppose the piercing density of the Balthaser staff is?

Conclusion: I still hate the overuse of Flash.

Briefly Noted

• Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.: The WiMAX Guys’ main business is new installs for people who want to set up wireless hotspots such as hotels, warehouses, apartment buildings, and office buildings or hotzones that cover cities. We also sell a knowledge-based Web portal called the MAX K-Base. Check out our main Website at www.TheWiMAXGuys.com. My wife created a bit of a stir when her op-ed piece was published in the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper after the election. Her article, “Two Nations, Handcuffed Together,” has been commented on or linked to by more than 85 Websites. She’s now created a Website to capitalize on her newfound pundit status. Check it out at www.debellsworth.com. Several issues ago I debuted SNS Begware, an opportunity for you, gentle reader, to express your appreciation by tipping your server via PayPal. See the sidebar for more info. Total in the kitty so far: $91.48. Thanks Dave!
• The Raw File – SNS is dedicated to delivering the scoop on the latest and greatest. However, I collect lots of information that never makes it into the newsletter before it gets old. I’ve collected all this aging info into a page called The Raw File. This page is the raw information I gather for SNS articles. It’s not pretty, and some may be a little incoherent, but chances are there are still things in TRF that might be news to you. So therefore, use The Raw File at your own risk – it’s 45+ pages of the best stuff that didn’t make it into SNS. The Raw File
• Microsoft Soundbite Security : Well, it looks like the behemoth has learned the talk. Can they walk it? Their latest soundbite: “With security, it's never who you know. It's who you don't know.”
• FindForward Can Spot That Meme: One of the really ubiquitous buzzwords of the early Web was meme, defined as a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Or more concisely, a thought virus. The rise of the idea of “soccer moms” is an example of the spread of a meme. Well, my favorite search engine, Google, is now so broad that you can chart the rise and fall of memes throughout the whole 20^th century using a new search service called FindForward. In addition to being a regular search engine, the service allows you to specify which half of the 20^th century to search for your term and gives back a graph depicting the popularity of the term by year. Cool idea, but, unfortunately, it’s not tremendously accurate, placing the first mention of the pet rock in 1951 instead of 1975. According to the site, the service, called Centuryshare, “tries to find natural peaks for ideas in particular years by searching the Web via Google. For every year, the number of the year is combined with the search query: to find out when Elvis Presley was at the height of his fame, the engine searches for Elvis Presley 1950, Elvis Presley 1951, Elvis Presley 1952, and so on, keeping track of the returned result count along the way.” Despite its flaws, FindForward is a harbinger of services to come, once all human knowledge has been digitized (see the Library of Alexandria and Library of Congress efforts) and put online. FindForward
• Dear Mr. Interjections R. Slatternly . . . You probably get spam all the time from people with improbable names. To avoid anti-spam efforts, spammers auto generate spammer names, with often hilarious results. Here’s just a partial list of the funny ones I got recently. I mean, really, Hollis Hartley? LOL! On a serious note, find out how to report spam at Abuse.net.
• Forward to Everyone You Know: The next time you get one of those urgent-forward-this-email-to-everyone-you-know messages from someone, strike a blow for sanity and direct the forwarder to this little quiz. Dr. Joe Thanks to Alert SNS Reader Doug Laney for the pointer.
• If You’ve Made it This Far: Well, there is a partial winner in our contest: Alert SNS Reader Ken Florian correctly identified the song containing the lyric “And I said yes sir brother sheriff, and that's your wife on the back of my horse.” The song is indeed Gangster of Love, a song made popular by Stevie “Guitar” Miller and first appearing on his album Sailor. Miller did not, however, write the song, which was penned by Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who had a minor hit with it in 1957. My favorite other cover recording of the song is by Johnny Winter, on an obscure disk called Black Cat Bone. You may recall the contest was to email me the retort to the partial music lyric buried somewhere in the previous newsletter. The prize was one stick of totally obsolete PC memory. Sadly, I cannot award the memory to Mr. Florian, since he neglected to also answer the tiebreaker, “Who is Hoops McCann?” twice. Hint: By this I mean there are two different answers to the question. So, to claim the memory, Alert SNS Readers must first answer that tiebreaker and then also tell me where I can buy the LP featuring songs containing the lyrics “nauseous gasser” and “merry-go-round” for less than $69. It’s only going to get harder unless someone can emerge victorious.

No Longer Free, Enlightening and Frightening for Half a Decade, Alert SNS Reader Hall of Fame, Support SNS, No Telling How Long This Will Remain True

Yes, that’s right. The StratVantage News Summary is no longer free – of advertising, that is. Of course, you can still receive SNS for free, but now you’ll be seeing Google AdSense ads along with the brilliant commentary.

This reversal of a long-standing SNS policy was not an easy decision, especially considering how much I hate advertising. It was based on a need to derive some value for the amount of work I put in to each issue without charging for subscriptions. Because, as we all know, information wants to be free and, as a corollary, no one wants to pay for stuff they get from the Internet unless it’s delivered to their door by a uniformed courier of some sort.

Years ago, I did actually drop an ad into SNS, basically because I thought the ad was funny. It generated at least one comment claiming that the newsletter had been hacked.

With the advent of Google AdSense, however, advertising has become a bit more palatable. What the service does is match its ads with the content of the page you are viewing. This means the ads are likely to be pretty relevant to your interests, since you’re obviously reading the page for a reason. Plus, the ads are text and not whirling, whizzy graphics.

I must say there is one pretty draconian restriction in AdSense’s Terms and Conditions, however. I must agree not to “engage in any action or practice that reflects poorly on Google or otherwise disparages or devalues Google’s reputation or goodwill.”

I always thought Google really sucked. They are up to no good and their real motto is “Evil, 24/7.”

We’ll see how that grabs them.

But seriously, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and any site that accepts advertising faces the possibility of being influenced by the advertiser. I’ve never said anything bad about Google, and I think they’re generally a fine company, except for their Gmail Privacy Policy (specifically, “Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account . . . Information displayed or clicked on in your Gmail account (including UI elements, ads, links, and other information) is also recorded.”) But I reserve the right to trash them in the future, ads or no ads.

Enlightening and Frightening for Half a Decade

As SNS approaches its fifth birthday September 24^th, it’s appropriate to look back across a span of time that has seen the deflation of the dotcom bubble, the acceleration of outsourcing, and the explosion of Wi-Fi along with many other rapidly-accelerating technological trends. Over the next couple of issues, I’ll be dredging up some of the more interesting nuggets from SNS and taking a look at some of the predictions, by me and by others, and how they panned out.

Five years ago, were you thinking about wireless Internet via Wi-Fi, even across whole cities? I was. The very first SNS in 2000 mentioned it, and take a look at the analysis and predictions on this front from four years ago,

Speaking of the first SNS, here are the topics covered in the inaugural issue and the current status of each:

One-Third of Business Say E-Commerce Will Transform	Yeah, e-commerce has turned out to be somewhat of a big thing.
Microsoft Enhances bCentral	bCentral morphed from the probable category killer offering a collection of hosted Web tools, email, e-commerce and marketing applications and such to what appears to be a marketing site for Microsoft. Microsoft did not dominate small business IT through bCentral as many had feared they would.
City-Wide Wireless Service Provider	Metropolitan wireless is an extremely hot topic now, both on the commercial and the free-for-all side. I started a company to exploit this trend.
New Mobile Modem Hits Download Speeds of 128 kbps	Metricom has gone bye-bye, but Ricochet, their metropolitan wireless Internet service has been sold several times, ending up with Terabeam Wireless and offering just three markets: San Diego, Denver, and Aurora, CO. If they’d had the cash, they could have dominated back in the 56Kbps era.
Out on a Limb with M-Commerce	Here’s an example of an industry analyst prediction that actually panned out. In 2000, Forrester predicted there was latent demand for Internet-enabled mobile phones. This prediction is finally coming true with Verizon’s new high speed EV-DO data network and Sprint and Cingular playing catch-up.
Shakeout Looming in B2B Communities?	Um, yes, you could say there was a slight B2B online marketplace shakeout.
1 Million Businesses on DSL in 3 Years? Sounds light to me	Well, it wasn’t. I hadn’t counted on the strong performance of cable broadband, the incredible problems of early DSL, and the stupidity of the telcos. Business DSL lines numbered only 830,000 in 2003.
Preparing for the B2B Battle	The subject of this piece, VerticalNet, has survived, but hardly as the dominant force in online B2B marketplaces it once was. It is now a provider of supply chain solutions. When I worked at Virtualfund, we considered VerticalNet our major competition. Virtualfund imploded in late 2000, although its stock is still traded, after having been hijacked by sharks. At least VerticalNet is in the same business category as it was back in the dotcom day.
Wireless Web wave breaks over the IPO market	Yes, wireless was a hot VC market, and still is an area with some signs of venture capital life these days.
The Great Thing About Standards: There are so many of them!	RSS 1.0, the standard I was talking about in this item, spawned the blogger revolution and has indeed contributed to moving us toward Web inventor Tim Berners Lee's vision for the “semantic web”: one vast database of information. See Google.
Business guru Tom Peters sees major e-commerce shakeout	I doubted Tom Peters’ credentials in B2B e-commerce after seeing him speak in May 2000. Nonetheless, I agreed with his prediction that over 85 percent of e-commerce-based companies would bite the big one. At least.

Alert SNS Reader Hall of Fame

But of course, I don’t do SNS alone. I am backed up by legions of Alert SNS Readers who contribute the interesting, bizarre and poignant infonuggets that serve as starting points for my rants. Below is the Alert SNS Reader Hall of Fame, along with what each has contributed.

Alert SNS Reader (tally)	Contribution
Roger Hamm (13)	PDA/cell phone convergence, selling bogus .usa domain names, wireless camera-in-a-capsule, Google’s uber-computer, Six Technologies That Will Change the World, Ray Kurzweil/The Jerk, Odd Todd, Young Scientist Round Table, GeekDIY, business plans of failed dotcoms, nanotube white paper, space elevator, teens wrote Goner worm
Andrew Hargreave (12)	Super DCMA laws, the “evil bit”, Acme Rent-A-Car fining $150 for speeding, Hasbro’s game, POX, Good Technology, hacking Xbox, software as a service patent, Microsoft’s dead supporters, fighting Code Red, hacked site liability, Arizona education ASP
David Dabbs (11)	Fast packet keying, implanted RFID chips, The Death of TCP/IP: Why the Age of Internet Innocence is Over, wireless LAN and Bluetooth network, DeCSS, next-bench marketing, disposable technology, wireless LAN security, PDF virus, Industry Standard demise, Hyper-Sonic Sound System
Larry Kuhn (10)	PC WAP browser, virtual keyboard, Microsoft’s SmartPhone, PC-Ephone, Valley Of the Geeks, broadband’s always-on-ness, Hitachi’s disk tutorial, Microsoft Toast, Java struggle, Microsoft Passport
Andy Stevko (5)	comments in Windows 2000 code, server admins fighting back, Code Reuse embarrassment, Burning Man survivor report, Microsoft security advisory parody
Nick Stanley (4)	Go FoneBlog™, broadband in the hinterland, Fiber To The Home, Solving the Broadband Paradox
Todd Mortenson (4)	BuzzWhack, Subservient Chicken, Wi-Fi players list, sports as broadband killer app
Bill Lehnertz (4)	Cat in peril, nano applications, nanowhizz, nano frankenfood
Tim Plas (3)	Wal-Mart’s RFID move, SeaCode, outsourcing to Native Americans
John Gehring (3)	Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 (NeRD), Scan Based Trading, VenueMaitred, patents
Mike Todey (3)	Laser-read databases, IBM’s hard disk storage technology, Millipede
Jeff Ellsworth (3)	“There are more things out there; therefore more things can be conceived.” Wiretap Authority, PGP in 9/11 planning
Dr. Andrew Odlyzko (2)	Content is Not King, Privacy, Economics, and Price Discrimination on the Internet
John Skach (2)	Voice interfaces, position sensing and Big Brother
Dean Cowdery (2)	The Shredder, Darwin Magazine
Jacob Jaffe (2)	Microsoft Strategic Technology Protection Program, Smart Tags
Ken Florian (2)	Qurb, ‘Newfies’
Peter Ellsworth	iPods at Duke
Pete Simpson	Wallflower Plus wireless picture frame
Jacqueline Miller	Your House is Smarter Than a Vintage Bug
Eric Strauss	Cell phone pix
Valerie Janda	the ultimate car hack
Doug Laney	ACLU privacy piece
Steve Harr	Bandwidth priced like energy
Marv Vikla	Downside of offshoring
Bob Burkhart	VisualRoute
Dave Harkins	BzzCard
Deb Ellsworth	POX game platform
Nick Caffarra	Registered sex offenders online
Claudia Swan	US behind in wireless
Robert Koerner	Alert SNS Reader secret handshake

I’d like to thank all the Alert SNS Readers for keeping me on my toes!

Want to get on this list? Send your infonuggets along and who knows? Immortality might be yours.

Support SNS

So one era ends, another begins. SNS will continue to clutter your inbox for as long as you care to subscribe. But if you’d like to tip your server, either click on the ads to the right (which you may not see if you're reading this in your email), or use the Support SNS button also on the right. Another thing you can do is forward each issue of SNS to everyone you know and encourage them to subscribe, for free.

See you next issue.

Briefly Noted

• Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.: It’s here: A wireless networking company called The WiMAX Guys. Our main business is new installs for people who want to set up wireless hotspots such as hotels, warehouses, apartment buildings, and office buildings or hotzones that cover cities. We also sell a knowledge-based Web portal called the MAX K-Base. Check out our main Website at www.TheWiMAXGuys.com. My wife created a bit of a stir when her op-ed piece was published in the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper after the election. Her article, “Two Nations, Handcuffed Together,” has been commented on or linked to by more than 85 Websites. She’s now created a Website to capitalize on her newfound pundit status. Check it out at www.debellsworth.com. Several issues ago I debuted SNS Begware, an opportunity for you, gentle reader, to express your appreciation by tipping your server via PayPal. See the sidebar for more info. Total in the kitty so far: $91.48. Thanks Dave!
• The Raw File – SNS is dedicated to delivering the scoop on the latest and greatest. However, I collect lots of information that never makes it into the newsletter before it gets old. I’ve collected all this aging info into a page called The Raw File. This page is the raw information I gather for SNS articles. It’s not pretty, and some may be a little incoherent, but chances are there are still things in TRF that might be news to you. So therefore, use The Raw File at your own risk – it’s 45+ pages of the best stuff that didn’t make it into SNS. The Raw File
• No Telling How Long This Will Remain True: But if you perform the following steps, you’ll be taken to a surprising Website. 1.) Go to www.google.com 2.) Type in the single word: failure 3.) Press the I'm feeling lucky button (instead of the Google search one) 4.) Figure out how it was done and email me. Thanks to Alert SNS Reader Seth Freeman for the pointer.
• If You’ve Made it This Far: Well, there still has been only one entrant in our contest: Alert SNS Reader Todd Mortenson. You may recall the contest was to email me the retort to the partial music lyric buried somewhere in the previous newsletter. The prize was one stick of totally obsolete PC memory. The answer was: “And I said yes sir brother sheriff, and that's your wife on the back of my horse.” So the memory has remained unclaimed. I’ll award it to the first person who emails me the name of that song (so easy!), the partial lyric I was referring to, and who also answers the tiebreaker from last issue: Who is Hoops McCann? Twice. Good luck!

Bits & Pieces Again

I need to do a little end of summer house cleaning, so here are a bunch of interesting tidbits that have been gathering dust here at StratVantage Central.

• Stop the Credit Card Madness: If you’re like me, you get several credit card offers a week, or perhaps a day. I hope you’re shredding the applications forms, because these persistent annoyances are a great source of identity theft. If you’d like to stop getting these offers, for either five years or forever, you can opt out online. Doing so removes your name from the lists at the four largest credit bureaus, but may not stop all offers from coming. (So who wants to only stop getting them for five years?) OptOutPreScreen.com
• Cell Phone Do Not Call List Hoax: I’ve railed before about how you should be suspicious of any email that encourages you to forward it to all your friends. I got one recently that was only partly false. It said, in part, “In 31 days, cell phone numbers are being released to telemarketing companies and you will start to receive sales calls.” It goes on to urge you to place your cell phone number on a national do not call list. Turns out the list is real, but the urgency is not. According to the Netlore Archive, “it's true that the major wireless phone providers (except Verizon) have announced their intention to establish a 411 directory of customers' cell phone numbers beginning in 2006, it is not true that they plan to ‘publish’ said directory for any and all to read.” It’s also true that you can put any number on the Federal Trade Commission do not call list to avoid solicitations. Do Not Call List
• Don’t Answer the Boss’ Email: A new kind of hoax email technique is on the rise. You may be familiar with phishing, or emails pretending to be from eBay or a bank that ask you to go to a Website and re-enter your personal information. Well, many people have caught on to this scam and so now a new technique called spear phishing (just because it sounds cool, I guess) substitutes your boss as the person asking you to give personal information. Email security company MessageLabs said in June that it has seen the tactic grow steadily during the year to the point where it now sees one to two spear phishing campaigns a week. So, whom do you trust? eWeek
• You’re Famous! If you’ve ever been mentioned on a Web page, chances are a company called ZoomInfo has created a summary of information about you. I stumbled onto this service recently and was amazed at what they knew about me. When I first searched for my name, I found six or seven different summaries gleaned from former employer Websites and other sources. ZoomInfo allowed me to gather these together and edit them into a pretty neat summary of where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’ve no idea what ZoomInfo’s business model is, other than getting click-through revenue from the Google Ads they run, but it’s a nice alternative to Googling that potential business associate. ZoomInfo
• Verizon Expands Broadband Wireless: My company is called The WiMAX Guys, and we named ourselves that because we thought WiMAX was going to be the next big thing in wireless. In the two years since we changed our name (from The Wi-Fi Guys for reasons that make a long sad story), though, I’ve come to believe that the cell phone companies are eventually going to own wireless broadband. The reason? A technology called EV-DO and its successor, EV-DV. EV-DO is a wireless broadband technique that can give you up to 600Kbps Internet access anywhere you can get cell phone coverage. Verizon recently announce several more cities that are covered, and their BroadbandAccess service has finally come to the hinterland of Minnesota. At $80 a month for unlimited data, it’s not too economical, but the company just reduced the price to $60/month for subscribers that also have their voice service. The real-world speeds this service provides are pretty close to low-end broadband, and I think many people may give up their DSL and go wireless. But what’s even more exciting is the coming EV-DV service, which promises real-world speeds of 1Mbps! Although WiMAX promises higher data rates, achieving the kind of coverage the big cell companies can provide will be a significant challenge. It’s very likely that the Verizons and Sprints of the world will own the home broadband market once EV-DV becomes available. So perhaps we should change our name to The EV-DV Guys and become Verizon resellers. Verizon
• Plenty of IT jobs: For several years now, I’ve been hearing about the coming shortage of IT workers. The graying of America, and especially the graying of federal IT workers, combined with the decline in the number of college students opting for a degree in Computer Science, is likely to result in a severe shortage of geeks. Well, I say, bring it on! It’s about time consulting rates got better. Alert SNS Reader Tim Plas sent along a link to a blog that discusses this trend as well as a trend toward outsourcing to Native Americans. MN Headhunter
• Production Nanotubes: Nanotechnology, the science of creating things at a molecular level, holds great promise, as I’ve previously discussed. However, it may be evolving quicker than expected, since a joint effort between the University of Texas and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization is cranking out industrial-ready material made of nanotubes at the rate of 47 feet per minute. Nanotubes are carbon rings arranged as a tube and are 2 millionths-of-an-inch (2000 times thinner than paper) wide. The coolest thing about them is they are 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight. They also conduct electricity and emit light when heated. Recently, Motorola showed a working prototype of a nanotech computer monitor. The monitor uses an array of nanotubes to fire electrons at a conventional screen. But since nanotubes can be made to glow, it’s not such a huge leap to a super-thin monitor made of glass coated with nanotubes. Best Syndication
• Indications of the Decline of Western Civilization: Sometimes I just want to throw up my hands in disgust. Are my fellow humans endowed with any wits at all? Not only do spam and phishing and email hoaxes work on an alarming percentage of the public, but even things that are obviously jokes, like the notion of a spray that can improve the speed of your Wi-Fi connection, get legs. The idea of the Wi-Fi Speed Spray started out as a really obvious joke on John Walkenbach’s Website. Before he knew it, though, some idiot had copied his site and put Wi-Fi Speed Spray up for bid on eBay. After being asked to stop by Walkenbach, and having been thrown off eBay by the Auction Police, the miscreant, erstwhile comedian Ari Burton, duped Walkenbach’s page on his own Website. When Walkenbach complained, Burton registered the domain wifispeedspray.com, rewrote some of Walkenbach’s copy, and started selling the product as the “ultimate gag / joke gift for the computer geek who has everything.” It’s like a mini-opera! Ari Burton
• Track Sex Offenders Online: Alert SNS Reader Nick Caffarra directed me to the New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry, one of many states’ efforts to identify sex offenders online (TX, CA, UT, MN). Nick was upset that there was a sex offender living in his vicinity. I say it could be worse. He could live in Bergen County, NJ. But what strikes me about these offenders is how ordinary most them appear. Kind of reminds me of a brief bit I did in a previous SNS on the game Coder or Cannibal? New Jersey Sex Offender Internet Registry
• Hold On a Sec . . . I Gotta Go Make . . . Some Electricity: How are you going to power all your cool nanotech devices? Whizz on ‘em! Thanks to Alert SNS Reader Bill Lehnertz for answering the call. LiveScience
• Palm a Turncoat? The rumor is that the next Palm Treo smartphone will be based on, gasp, Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system! Could it possibly be? Maybe, maybe not. But everyone thinks Palm’s working on a Cobalt-based Treo. The whole discussion is just more reason to not believe everything you see in a Photoshop world. Engadget
• Nano for Power: Nanotechnology will affect every area of our lives. Here’s an article on how it will affect the energy industry. Extreme Nano
• US Eclipsed by Third World on Wireless: Alert SNS Reader Claudia Swan sent along one of the countless articles I’ve seen recently about the fact that the US is 16^th in the world in wireless telephony. Written by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, the article is an “archive” article, according to the Times, and thus you must pay to see it. Or read it on a Third World Website, below. The Gray Lady The Indian Express
• Spamming Anti-Spammer: Spam is spam, no matter how noble your intentions. Anti-spam vigilante SPAMIS, or the Strategic Partnership Against Microsoft Illegal Spam, sends out lots of spam calling for a boycott of all Microsoft products because Microsoft is spamming. Do as I say, not as I do. Boycott Watch
• Here Come Nano Frankenfoods: Despite a bogus claim of healthful nanowater from a Chinese company, nanofood is currently a several billion dollar industry and is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2010. Thanks to Alert SNS Reader Bill Lehnertz for the ping. Alternet
• Nano Hydrogen for Power: If I had a nickel for every time a cynical techie told me that we can never have a hydrogen-based economy because it takes more energy to produce hydrogen than it stores, I’d have, well, maybe 30 cents. This is in-the-box thinking, folks, and it usually ends with an assertion that only nuclear power can make energy cheaply enough to make hydrogen economical. Remember way back in high school chemistry when you learned about catalysts, the compounds that dramatically reduce the energy needed for a reaction? Well nanocompany Signa has developed a nanocatalyst for hydrogen production from water. It’s not as cool as cold fusion, but if it’s real, problem solved. News.com
• Flogging Vlogs: OK, like Custer, it is difficult for me to admit an error. A couple years ago, I gave video blogging a “Naw, I don’t think so.” Erm, it’s actually a pretty big deal, thanks to the video cameras being built into modern phones. It has even given rise to a Jackass-wannabe called Ian, who will take your emailed challenges and perform them in front of his video camera. Enjoy your 15 minutes, Ian! Wired News