Petition to open the cellular networks

In a recent post, we noted that Apple had succeeded in negotiating some control over application and hardware design from Cingular wireless. Now Skype has petitioned the FCC to open cellular networks. If they prevail, we could see a wireless end-to-end network, with Internet like innovation. Wouldn't that be cool?

My guess is that the cellular companies will fight this vigorously, but that might be short sighted. If they provided competitively priced Internet access, they would take the wind out of the municipal network and hotspot movements. More important, an open wireless network would be an important piece of infrastructure, providing a much needed boost to the US economy and our sagging Internet.

There will be powerful companies on both sides of this important issue -- make your voice heard by signing an FCC petition.

The Skype petition is not yet posted on the FCC Web site, but we will update this post with a link when it is.

Lessig on copyright "orphans"

What happens if you are not sure who owns the copyright to something you want to use?

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and the inventor of Creative Commons licensing, discusses this "orphan" problem in the following presentations:

• Orphan works I (35 minutes)
• Orphan works II (8 minutes)

Lessig on spectrum deregulation

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor and the inventor of Creative Commons licensing, gives his views on spectrum deregulation in this presentation.

Overview chapter for a Globaltext book

The Global text project hopes to create a free library of 1,000 electronic textbooks for students in the developing world. One text, which is under construction, will introduce information systems.

I have just drafted a chapter that surveys quite a bit of the material we cover in this course. I'd appreciate feedback -- it is a first draft.

Apple negotiates for end-to-end control on the Cingular network

Our notes emphasize the fact that the Internet is an end-to-end network with application development, funding, hardware, and content being supplied by users, not carriers. Telephone, cable and cell phone companies would rather sell specific services which they provide, charge for and control.

Cellular companies have kept tighter control than telephone and cable companies, but this Wall Street Journal article says Apple's Steve Jobs played hardball in negotiating control over application and hardware design with Cingular in return for being the exclusive carrier for iPhone calls.

This means Apple can innovate. For example, iPhone users will be able to display a list of phone messages and listen to them out of order rather than consuming call minutes while a synthesized voice says "you have ten new messages ..." then listening to them one at a time. Try that with your current cell phone.

Amazon Web Services, a case study

Podcasting pioneer Doug Kaye, Amazon's Jeff Barr and others discuss a complex application Kaye built using Amazon Web Services. Kaye describes both the system architecture (loosely coupled services buffered by queues) and the business reasons (zero startup cost and seamless scalability) for using Amazon's virtual servers and storage rather than his own. He also expresses concern about the lack of a service-level agreement and dependence upon Amazon. Barr talks about Amazon's plans and the important role of the developer community. The show notes contain other links for those interested in more detail and other applications Amazon-based applications.

Larry Lessig talk on "The Withering of the Net"

Larry Lessig, inventor of Creative Commons licensing, gave a talk on "The Withering of the Net" at the Center for American Progress in Washington June 2006. Lessig mentions many things we cover -- the breakup of AT&T, telecommunication regulation, the end-to-end principle, license-free spectrum, copyright, net neutrality, etc. He fears Congress will let powerful network and media companies stifle innovation and participation. Favoring the "read-only" network at the expense of "read-write" network will harm our culture and economy.

Download the talk or the transcript.

If you find it interesting, you will also like Lessig's presentation on US copyright law.

A mashup example: adding audio to this blog

We talk about composite applications or mashups in class. This blog serves as an example.

There is a link at the bottom of each post that reads listen to this article, and, in the right-hand column, there is a link reading Audio RSS Feed.

If you follow the first link, you will hear a slightly stilted sounding woman reading the text of the article. The program that does this text to speech conversion is quite complex and requires a fast computer, but that complexity is hidden. A server at Talkr.com does the conversion and the link to that service required adding only one line of HTML code to the blog template.

Adding the RSS feed converts the blog to a podcast. A user who subscribes to the RSS feed will automatically receive spoken recordings of articles when they are posted. Again, this complex feature was added with a single line of HTML code in the blog template.

Adding these audio features brought the blog into compliance with university regulations on accessibility by blind people. Doing so took only a few minutes because of the simple API exposing the service at Talkr.com.

Practical tips for corporate podcasting

Michael Geoghegan, co-founder & CEO of Gigavox Media, gives practical advice in this informative presentation on corporate podcasting. He focuses on podcasts for corporate customers, as opposed to dissemination of internal information.

Geoghegan covers both internally produced podcasts and sponsorship of podcasts produced by others. This 19 minute excerpt focuses on internally produced podcasts using examples from three case studies. (The entire presentation is over an hour long).

Moyers' PBS documentary on "The Net at Risk"

Bill Moyers' PBS documentary The Net at Risk is now free to view online. The program covers topics including the growing connectivity gap between the US and other developed nations, net neutrality, municipal networks, and media concentration. The site has ancillary material like viewer discussion and commentary.

Telephone regulation

Confused by the comings and goings of AT&T and telephone regulation in the United States? Stephen Colbert explains it in this video. Still confused? Check out our short history teaching note.

QEDWiki -- develop mashups in the browser

IBM's QEDWiki is a powerful development system for building Web mashup applications.

Dion Hinchcliffe has prepared an eye-opening screencast demo of QEDWiki in which he builds a mashup of an address file and Google Maps in just a couple of minutes.

The impressive drag and drop development system runs in a single browser window. It provides an example of the power of AJAX in a browser, and makes one wonder how far AJAX can go in duplicating the functionality of local applications.

Business risk: Talkr.com, a terrific service, is in trouble.

Talkr.com illustrates the attraction and risk of mashups. Talkr.com is a text-to-speech service for blogs. It allows users to click to listen to particular posts or to subscribe to an RSS feed of the spoken version of the blog -- it automatically turns the blog into a podcast.

The audio version is valuable in at least two ways -- it makes the blog accessible to blind people and you can listen to it while away from your desk -- while driving, exercising, etc.

Adding audio to this blog took only a few minutes -- the power of mashups!

That is all good news. Now the bad news. Talkr.com is up for sale because they are not generating enough revenue.

This is another illustration of the business risks we talked about in an earlier post.

Outsourcing applications -- a university example

The Economist published an article on corporate use of consumer and other services. One example they cite is Arizona State University, which is using Google Mail and plans to use other Google services.

I create list servers for the students in my classes. Last semester, 3 out of 60 students used their CSUDH email addresses. This suggests that we are spending a lot to offer a service that only a few students value.

But, should CSUDH outsource our email and other applications? We cannot run servers as efficiently as folks like Google or Amazon, but, even if a service provider is cheaper and more reliable, can we depend upon them? This is a business and contractual decision as much as a technical and cost decision. I listed a few pros and cons in this teaching note.

Podcasting inside the organization

For examples of podcast applications inside corporations and other organizations and discussion of implementation and buy-in strategy, check this podcast by Michael Geohagen.

Geohagen's presentation was recorded at the Podcast Academy, a good source for podcasting information -- technology, applications, business -- in general.

Podcasting in higher education

For a discussion of the use of podcasting in teaching at Duke and Harvard, listen to this podcast from the Podcast Academy, a good source for podcasting information -- technology, applications, business -- in general.

An excellent example of open access publishing

The University of Michigan Press has a new Digital Culture imprint which will publish books free online while charging for the printed version. The first book is an anthology of The Best of Technology Writing 2006, a thoughtfully edited, eclectic collection of articles from publications like the New Yorker, Wired,The New York Times, and New Republic.

The publishing model worked for me. I was able to read enough to convince myself to purchase the book -- many of the articles seem interesting and relevant. I will also have students read selected chapters on line, and expect a couple of them will also end up buying the book.

If you are interested in open access publication, you will like Peter Suber's blog.

Best Google research presentations of 2006

Here are the "top 20" presentations at Google research. I've not looked at them yet, but some must have relevance to IS teaching and research.

Talkr.com, a text-to-spech service

In our introduction to audio processing, we spoke of various audio applications, including text-to-speech. Talkr.com offers a text to speech service for blogs. Using this service, you can now listen to any of the posts on this blog. You can also establish an RSS feed for an automatically generated podcast of the blog entries. Setting this up took only a few minutes -- one line of HTML sends the permalink for the blog entry to the Talkr.com server which generates the audio file from the text.

What are employers looking for?

Students often ask what employers are looking for in hiring new grads. Information Week columnist Stephanie Stahl says successful job seekers will have business sense along with IT knowledge, and Jason Fried of 37 Signals describes his hiring criteria in an audio presentation.

Best tech videos

Best tech videos is a collection of videos of conference presentations and screencast demos and tutorials. You can watch or download them.

Business use of consumer services

The Economist has an article on business use of consumer services. One could argue that consumer products and applications, not military or business, are now driving technological innovation.

One example cited in the article is Arizona State University which is now using Gmail and plans to use other Google services. ASU IT director Adrian Sannier explains why he made that choice in this blog entry.

Paying to seed a user community

J. C. R. Licklider described the importance of communities of common interest rather than common location in his widely influential 1968 paper on The Computer as a Communication Device. Today we have many examples of the importance and value of user-contributed content and community. But, people's time and attention are limited, and starting a successful community is difficult. Yelp.com has experimented with paying early users for reviews of restaurants and other local businesses.

Would you be willing to contribute content in an area you know about for a small fee?

Global wealth disparity underlies Internet disparity

We have discussed global disparity in Internet backbone deployment, cost and usage rates. North America, Western Europe and the rich Asian nations are the "haves," and the rest of the world ranges from "have not" to "have almost nothing." A recent UN study investigates the distribution of world wealth (as opposed to income), and, not surprisingly, finds high correlation with the Internet disparity we observed in class.

Amazon Web services

We have talked about data centers and mashups or composite applications. Amazon has exposed application programming interfaces for its applications and will also store your data at their data centers. All you supply is the business idea. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos describes their services in in a short video or you can read more in this Business Week article. Amazon Web services could be used for Internet, intranet or extranet applications.