Innov8ordie — MediaCommunicationsMarket Mashup

I have generally been pretty high on RSS (Really Simple Syndication) for some time.  Amazing generic technology that will slowly pervade alot of what happens on the web.  It puts the power into the listeners hands which to me makes it inheritly superior to other forms of publication.

Although RSS is not as widely understood as I would have thought it would be by now, it is getting more and more pervasive.  RSS today is sitting in the backseat while blogging drives (and hogs the spotlight).

As the tools to manipulate RSS feeds offer greater and greater flexibility perhaps RSS will come out of the backseat and do some driving.  Perhaps not though, RSS is a name only a mother could love.

For an example of a cool new tool that manipulates RSS look no further than xFruits at www.xfruits.com.  Cool stuff.  Actually they stole several elements of a service I wanted to create as a startup but there is still plenty of room for innovation in this space so I won’t let that get me down.

Check it out and let me know if it makes sense.  I think they need a little more intro on their front page to describe what they are up to, but all the early adopters probably will get it right away.  That will give them time to perpare for a bigger onslaught if they can manage to catch on.

So Tropos just doubled the speed on their access points.  http://news.com.com/2100-7351_3-6106581.html?part=rss&tag=6106581&subj=news

This will greatly improve the Philadelhpia, San Francisco and New Orleans build outs.  Very interesting.  When it rolls out in Philadelphia I will have to take a road trip and check it out.  Make a few Skype calls and see how it works.

According to GigaOm the Google muni Wifi is not only working, its early.  It just opened is virtual doors for business and getting very high marks for both coverage and speed.  They are offering 1M free service for everyone and covered 11.5 square miles for less than a million dollars.

The description of the network is interesting too as it is (as I would have guessed) about 6 to 1 “leaf nodes” to “sink nodes” in the mesh with three main offramps.  Apparently Google can fairly easily up the capacity (I assume in backhaul) if it turns out to be needed.

Google may end up being evil but I really like that they are backing this free wireless access stuff.  Hey Google, how about some East Coast love?

Wow. I had poked around the FON public wifi site quite a bit some time ago. Cool stuff.
Standard 802.11 router, add a little software and share it with the world. Then you can also share the worlds. Optionally you can even share in a bit of the revenue if outsiders use the network. Good stuff.
What really amazes me now is that apparently FON has raised some big money from Google and fun people like that. What is it using for? To subsidize the heck out of access points. They are selling them for $5! Wow.

So a small company called Merkai Networks (www.merkai.com) is releasing a $59 wireless 802.11G access point. No big deal. The thing is that node has some mesh capaibilities baked right in. This allows it to extend existing muni wi-fi networks as well as to bake your own mini wireless mesh.

It all still has a way to go but add the above to the fact that its based on opensource software and it really opens up some interesting options.

So I have not blogged for a while.
I have a good excuse.

Changed jobs, jumped off the corporate bandwagon and made a step getting closer to where I want to be.

So far so good.

Part time job at a CAD reseller.  More time on games.  Cellular and PC downloadable with a great little developer called Sports Mogul.  I will be contributing to a more official blog there, but will keep completely unrelated notes and thoughts here. 

Still find the whole media infrastructure fragmenting fascinating….