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Underway in Ireland
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30 September 2002 |
SMART MOBS -- You can become a Wi-Fi provider for your neighbourhood by using Proxim's product, priced from about $2,000 to $6,000. The kit includes all the equipment necessary to become a small-scale network provider. Each "ISP in a box" kit can serve about 250 customers.
The technology uses 802.11b to create a wireless zone of up to 12 miles long, far beyond the usual 300-foot-radius range that Wi-Fi typically achieves.
Setting up this architecture would probably require a Tsunami QuickBridge. It comes in three varieties - Tsunami QuickBridge 60, Tsunami QuickBridge 20, and Tsunami QuickBridge 20 with T1/E1 connection. Tsunami QuickBridge 60 provides data connectivity up to 60 Mbps between buildings up to 3 miles apart. Tsunami QuickBridge 20 offers up to 20 Mbps connectivity at a range of up to 6 miles. Tsunami QuickBridge 20 with the optional T1 or E1 connection, which enables businesses to establish both voice and data connectivity, offers up to 12 Mbps connectivity for up to 6 miles, still at a fraction of the cost of leasing two T1 or E1 lines.
Tsunami QuickBridge 20 has a list price of $3499; Tsunami QuickBridge 20 with T1/E1 connection has a list price of $7499; and Tsunami QuickBridge 60 has a list price of $5499.
Proxim, which sells a third of the world's Wi-Fi equipment, is the largest company yet to enter the market selling long-range Wi-Fi equipment. Others with uber-Wi-Fi networks include cordless-phone maker Engenius and networking companies Linksys and D-Link. These companies said they've had success peddling the gear to Web providers that are even smaller than Proxim's customers.
Proxim's gear is already being used by likes of Mile High Online in Denver and Prairie Inet in West Des Moines, Iowa. The Proxim product can achieve long distances because the company boosted the power inside its access points--the radios that create the network. It also added additional antennas to the access points so signals could be beamed directly to a home, rather than creating a cloud of access.
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PALGRAVE JOURNALS.com -- The first issue of the Information Visualization Journal is freely available online. It's a peer-reviewed international journal, serving researchers and practitioners throughout the world on all topics related to information visualization. The journal publishes articles on fundamental research and applications of information visualization, including theories, methodologies, techniques.
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JWZ.org -- Enter a phrase into a search engine and capture an image as a result. Then combine the images onto a single Web page. Then you have a Web Collage!
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Conwy Valley Bedrock Geology  CONWY VALLEY -- Deep gorges expose bedrock geology throughout parts of Wales, where slate grows both horizontally and vertically.
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Fresh Air Near Conwy  CONWY, Wales -- Ruth and Bernie enjoy some quiet time along a mountainous path, in the shadows of Yr Wyddfa, Glydeririau and the Carneddau. We walked along the Bwrdeistref Sirol lake before taking time out next to dozens of sheep who appeared to be glued to the side of a 45 degree slope.
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29 September 2002 |
Underway on Virgin Rail VIRGIN RAIL -- It's amazing that I'm keeping a mobile phone signal for nearly 3 hours underway on Virgin Rail. That's quite a comparison to the frequent black spots I encountered when riding Amtrak in the States last week.
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LONDON -- The typical anti-war protestors are marshalling against an Iraqi war effort. And Chris Croome caught a few interesting angles inside his photoblog.
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28 September 2002 |
DUBBERLEY.com -- Emily Dubberley wrote about The Cliterati several days ago. The idea behind it came from her rather ambitious aspiration to get the word Cliterati into the Oxford English Dictionary as a positive alternative to the word 'slut'. Now 'slut' can be used as a compliment. I love that you're such a filthy slut. But it's still tainted by negative connotations. Cliterati on the other hand, still has a chance to mean something positive.
Members of 'The Cliterati' are feisty women who love sex and aren't afraid to admit it. Whatever they do, whether alone or with a partner (or several), they throw themselves into. Cliterati girls don't worry about whether they look OK naked. They know that if they're there and naked, the person they're with is too busy thinking about the debauched activity going on to notice a bit of cellulite.
Forget faking it - Cliterati girls do the job themselves if their partner isn't pushing the right buttons - but they make sure their partner has a good view so that they can learn from the experience. They know what they like because they've been masturbating regularly for years.
Cliterati girls set their own boundaries; who cares what everyone else is doing? If they want to try something new, they'll do it because they've decided it's a good idea, not because some magazine tells them to. But they are always prepared to push their own boundaries, although they never force their ideas on anyone else, whether partner or friend. They accept that sexuality is a personal thing and just 'cos something might push their buttons, it doesn't mean that it will push anyone else's.
Cliterati girls aren't afraid of making the first move but know how to flirt, for when they feel like being seduced.
The Cliterati always practice safe sex, to protect themselves and their partners. They've got enough self esteem to refuse sex if it's unsafe.
Cliterati girls know that there's a difference between fucking and making love and know that both can have good points.
Cliterati girls might sleep with loads of people. They might be virgins. They might be married and monogamous. They can be straight, lesbian, bi or whatever. But they know who they are, they love their sexual side and they don't give a damn who knows.
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I Love New York!  NEW YORK -- I just love this city! In the lobby of my aunt's convent hangs an American flag composed of handprints. Outside, the Stars and Stripes flies proudly on buildings, on cars and on shoulders of dozens of people. Downstairs, Reverend Francis Buu invites parishioners in perfect English to "Let's Celebrate" and closes the Mass with "Have a Nice Day" but everything in between is a lesson in patient listening. Some regulars write it off to a speech impediment but it might also be the quality of the English course available to him when he was learning a second language in Vietnam.
Info about the colours of the lights on the Empire State Building.
See the Empire State Building tower cameras.
x: 350 r: 3535
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NEW YORK -- I am buried more than 10 pages deep when looking for "Bernie" on Google. That has got to change. I'm not anywhere in Google News. By changing elements of this weblog, I think I can improve these standings.
Updates:
- Dec 02: The Bernie behind Topgold has percolated up to the top 40 on Google.
- Mar 03: Now at #14 on Google.
x: 119
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BOSTON -- Web Design World 2002 opens in Boston on 9 Oct. It's a well-organised Thunderlizard Conference. Although I think the Macromedia DevCons are better, the Thunderlizard conferences are very well done.
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27 September 2002 |
 John Robb -- Like John Robb, I've been empowered by the PC. In Robb's view
the personal computer is all about personal leverage. If you want to keep the cycle alive, increase the leverage. What is the biggest opportunity available for increasing personal leverage? Suck the Web down to the PC. Reinvent it on the PC. John Robb and I want the best of the Web on our PCs. We want to easily publish complex sites through tools like Radio. We want to link into P2P neighbourhoods. We want to blend data in ways that make it more meaningful. I agree with John Robb: Reinvent the Web and it will drive PC sales for years.
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LANCASTER, Pennsylvania -- I've got a free home DSL line, so I'm using the time to pare away some of the blog rot that infected my Blog Neighbourhood. I think the resulting list will be tighter and its text tidbits tastier.
Brian Smith says I used "blog rot in the way we're thinking" which caused me to notice that Google has 26 references to blog rot.
x: 1256
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WIRELESS WEDNESDAY -- Karlin has attracted a good round of comments on the heels of a Wireless Wednesday session in Dublin about warchalking. We identify wireless networks open for connectivity by a chalked symbol. It turns out this marking mechanism (or is it acting on the markings?) may be illegal in Ireland, due to some element of a regulation passed by the then-Dept of Public Enterprise a year ago.
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26 September 2002 |
CNET.com -- There is new technology that allows handhelds to share files directly, without the need for a PC. Brother Dave, with his ear to the ground at HP, suggests there are interesting ways of using an offshoot of the Universal Serial Bus 2.0 specification for things like memory card readers connected to printers.
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Seán Mac Cann -- Ruminates about the state of Internet services in Ireland, saying, "Let them eat pizza through a straw." He believes the Irish legal system has been hijacked by the Net access wreckers so that the law is now de facto on the side of the closed-market status quo. For more, read the case for the prosecution and his defence of the telecoms regulator.
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BLOGISTAN -- Karlin Lillington approaches the first tier of reflective bloggers with her essay on intercast. I believe it doesn't matter how many read your stuff. What matters is the impact you make in the germination of policy.
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25 September 2002 |
NEW YORK -- The Irish Echo appears on top of The New York Times in some news agents in Manhattan, reverberating some of the racist comments spewing forth from Ireland against the Nice Treaty. Americans who opt to work in Ireland see the country as a gateway to Europe. Irish who say NO to Europe will only damage the perception some companies have of Ireland's open-minded and open market access. The Irish Echo has reported on hearing some blatantly racist comments while "doorstepping" the voters. One of the race cards played is the fear of the flood of immigrants that will arrive with passage of the Nice Treaty. As a native English speaker who was "refused leave to land" in Ireland, I have personal experience about this issue. Irish Immigration views itself as the Protector of Irish Jobs. Multicultural job expertise does not figure in its remit.
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THE PENTAGON -- With a few clicks of a mouse, you can remove layers of security from the Pentagon’s war plans for Iraq. That’s because the American military leverages commercial satellites in its quest to execute one of the most explosive and shortest-lived conflicts next month. You can see many of these satellite images now.
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Rajesh -- Knowledge Managers should peek behind this digital dashboard because it shows how blogging architectures can enhance productivity.
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Joel on Software -- Read 12 reasons why a good programmer should not worry about employment. Visual programming tools might take less time to code projects, but lots of software must be written and every year we tend to come up with a new, uncharted territory waiting to be filled with new software.
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24 September 2002 |
Grassroots Connectivity
Nicholas Negroponte and Peter Cochrane think there will be a grassroots movement to supplant some of the services now offered
by traditional telecom companies. They point to the growth of Wi-Fi networks in the U.S.
and the movement in Europe by local municipalities and universities to build and operate their own telecom networks. These things will change the way telecom services operate forever, says Negroponte. "Telecom could invert itself and become a bottom-up phenomenon."
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The New York Times then Ireland's Sunday Tribune reported last week how Congress is struggling to find a definition of the term "hacking". Debate in Congress over legislation proposed by Howard Berman's bill would give the recording industry the right to use network software to inspect people's personal computer files to make sure they do not contain copyrighted music. USA Today carries thoughts from Berman's opponents who say it goes too far in invading the rights of individuals. Wayne State University professor and computer security expert Jessica Litman says of the proposed legislation: "What it seems to say is that if the copyright owner doesn't impair the integrity of files, it gets a complete free pass, and if it does impair the integrity of files, it gets a qualified cheap pass." Stan Lebowitz, a management professor at University of Texas-Dallas, comments: "Spoofing seems like a legitimate technique for them to use. Hacking, however, seems to go to far" -- and notes that what the bill allows "would still qualify as hacking, under most laws and in most people's minds."
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23 September 2002 |
Info Blocked from Enterprise Ireland Mailing List DUBLIN, Ireland -- Enterprise Ireland declines to publish this information about intranet architecture, so I point out here that you need to "ensure the technology can build an sustain an aggregated source of knowledge without becoming bloated. I've seen Sharepoint used as a Hoover for large documents that ccould not be easily shared among colaborators using dial-up nodes. I know you wouldn't encounter that limitation with Index www.aboutindex.com as it creates easily manageab le knowledge objects at its point of harvest. Plus, it generates exceptionally powerful meta data which makes cataloguing automatic and reduces the problems associated with cross-referencing and locating information."
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NEWS SCAN.com -- NewsScan Honorary Subscriber: Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier
A chemist, philosopher, and economist, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) took an active part in the events leading to the French Revolution, and drew up plans and reports advocating many reforms, including the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures.
The son of a wealthy Parisian lawyer, Lavoisier completed a law degree in accordance with family wishes, but his real interest was in science, which he pursued with passion while leading a full public life. On the basis of his earliest scientific work, mostly in geology, he was elected in 1768 at the age of 25 to the Academy of Sciences, France's most elite scientific society. In the same year he bought into the Ferme Générale, the private corporation that collected taxes for the Crown on a profit-and-loss basis. A few years later he married the daughter of another tax farmer, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, who was not quite fourteen at the time. Madame Lavoisier prepared herself to be her husband's scientific collaborator by learning English to translate the work of British chemists and by studying art and engraving to illustrate her husband's scientific experiments.
In 1775 Lavoisier was appointed a commissioner of the Royal Gunpowder and Saltpeter Administration and took up residence in the Paris Arsenal. There he equipped a fine laboratory, which attracted young chemists from all over Europe to join him in the "Chemical Revolution" then in progress.
So great a change ensued in experimental chemistry, and in theory and nomenclature, and such a mass of facts was coordinated and explained by Lavoisier that he has been justly called "the father of modern chemistry."
He was the first to provide a definitive explanation of the formation of acids and salts, to enunciate the principle of conservation as set forth by chemical equations, to develop quantitative analysis, gas analysis, and calorimetry, and to create a consistent system of chemical nomenclature.
He made deep researches in organic chemistry, and studied the metabolism of organic compounds. He often repeated the experiments of other chemists such as Priestley and Cavendish, sometimes elaborating on their results without crediting their original work. Despite his eminence and his services to science and France, Lavoisier came under attack as a former farmer-general of taxes and was guillotined in 1794. A noted mathematician, Joseph-Louis Lagrange, remarked of this event, "It took them only an instant to cut off that head, and a hundred years may not produce another like it."
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22 September 2002 |
Jeroen Bekkers -- Several people have mused about using blogs as a forum for collaboration. Jeroen calls it collaborative work. Kevin Werbach points out how Jeremy Allaire thinks the Flash Communication Server does many of the things that Ray Ozzie does with Groove. As Jeroen says, "there's a deeper trend here. Whether you come from visual creativity tools or document-centered collaboration, you quickly realize that the next big thing is collaborative work."
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21 September 2002 |
DUBLIN, Ireland -- A funny thing happened to me while passing through Immigration at the Dublin Airport. I was refused "leave to land" which means I don't get to return to my Kilkenny home just yet. Instead, I will comply with an order issued by Detective Garda Michael Walsh, a member of the Garda Immigration Bureau put into place to stem the rise of immigrants to Ireland.
Getting refused leave to land has happened to other Americans before. The Brits refused Captain Beefheart's Magic Band leave to land years ago. At least 10 other hopeful passengers were rebuffed at Irish gates on the 20th of September, when I was punted out of the land where I pay my taxes. I will collect my thoughts for a possible consideration by the Irish Council on Civil Liberties.
This will be an interesting interlude. If my blog goes blank, listen to Technoculture about my saga. The server logs for this Web site shows a steady stream of concerned readers, visiting me in the riparian solitude of warmly received support.
"Auld Triangle Going Jingle Jangle" by Karlin Lillington, 23 Sep 02.
"Ireland's Racist No Attitude," Topgold Blog, 25 Sep 02.
"Get a Work Permit or Go to Jail" by Bernie Goldbach, Irish Examiner, 27 Sep 02.
"Source of Most Referrals," Topgold Blog, 2 Oct 02.
"Closing the Door" by Nick Mulcahy, Business Plus, November 2002.
"INS in the USA Detains Hundreds" by Maura McHugh in Babblogue, 19 December 2002.
Joi Ito ruminates on how some of the current policies to round up and discharge aliens is a throwback to the attitude that surrounded Japanese-Americans in the 1940s. A wide swath of opinion has percolated from the Joi Ito blog and is getting linked and watched in the blogosphere.
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20 September 2002 |
 ISOLA BELLA -- In 1844, Charles Dickens wrote, "For however fanciul and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful." Count Vitaliano Borromeo began the construction of the monumental Baroque palace in 1632 and the majestic and scenic gardens, which have made the island famous and which to this day bear witness to the splendours of an era. The Borromeo family home contains priceless works of art such as tapestries, furniture, statues, paintings, and stuccoes. It also has an unusual mosaic grotto, a cool and delightful place. Its classic gardens form an extraordinary, flowered monument laid out over a series of ornate and overlapping terraces.
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19 September 2002 |
Exploring Taormina  TAORMINA -- We're exploring the extremely rare straight streets found in Taormina.
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18 September 2002 |
Walking in Historical Taormina  TAORMINA, Sicily -- History oozes from the pavement here. The first Greek colony in Sicily was at Naxos, founded by the Chalcidians from Euboea in 734 BC. When Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Syracuse, destroyed Naxos, the survivors fled to Taormina and joined the Sicilians that had been living there since the 4th century BC. In 215 BC it became a federal state under the Roman Empire, and when Syracuse fell became the capital of Byzantine Sicily. The remains of this period prevail to this day, the most important being the ruins of Naumachia, a monumental nymphaeum, and the Odeon, a small imperial theatre used for rehearsals. The Arabs destroyed Taormina twice in the 10th century, while under the Normans it became a flourishing centre of art. Taormina shared the fate with the rest of the island, declining as it fell under the Swabians, the Aragons, the Angevins and Spanish, the Houses of Savoy and Habsburg of Austria.
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17 September 2002 |
Capo Taormina  CAPO TAORMINA, Sicily -- What a uniquely chromatic display of flowers, palaces, coves, and bays. Driving from Messina, we reached Taormina after climbing Capo St Andrea, which juts out into the sea between the inlets of Mazzaro on the left and Isola Bella on the right. Capo Taormina falls 50m to the sea with its steep hills full of villas reaching up 204 metres.
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16 September 2002 |
 BOTANICAL GARDENS, Sicily -- Orto Botanico of Palermo are among the oldest modern centers for botanical studies in the Mediterranean region. The park houses a greenhouse, seed and dried plant repository, catalogue archive, and more than ten hectares of outdoor gardens in the busy centre of what is today Sicily's largest city. The medieval kings of Sicily had vast gardens around the palaces known as the Cuba and the Zisa. The garden's neo-classical structures are based on designs by Trombetta, Marabitti and the famous Venanzio Marvuglia. One section of the gardens is arranged based on the Engler system, the other on the Linnaean system.
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15 September 2002 |
Sighting: Live Audio Comments Adam Curry --  Harold left behind an audio comment about standardizing audiblogging following a Live Curry blog item.
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Taormina's Beaches
 TAORMINA -- This warm Mediterranean city lies 689 feet above sea level with the coastline directly north and south. Several picturesque bays, with rocky coves and smooth sandy beaches, can be easily reached by cable car from the hotels.
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Taormina's Ampitheatre  AMPITHEATRE, Taormina -- Around 10 years ago, I was flying in and out of Sicily when Europe's highest and most active volcano was acting up. If you sit in the Taormina Ampitheatre during those eruptions, you will be treated to wonderful nocturnal fireworks. Seen from my aircraft flying out of the island, the dazzling blue Mediterranean frames the lizard-like slopes of the mountain.
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14 September 2002 |
Features in Audio Blogs Audio blogs should have specific features.- Little speaker icon
- They shouldn't merely read the text displayed in the posts, but instead provide commentaries to photos and ideas.
- The media should be Shocked inside the blog post.
- Special UI's have to be created and supported tht display the audio and provide control over the audio.
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13 September 2002 |
 TAORMINA -- Norman Harrison pointed out that Fontana Vecchia is one of the best-kept secrets of Taormina. Strangely, one can ask most native Taorminians where the house of D.H. Lawrence or Truman Capote is located and they would not be able to tell you. If fact, you would be hard pressed to find a single resident that even recognizes the names of these two famous writers. Yet, a street is named for Lawrence and another for the villa Fontana Vecchia. The natives go about their business without so much as a thought of these literary greats, as though they never existed. Perhaps it is the generation - more likely, it is because Taormina has been home to a multitude of famous residents.
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12 September 2002 |
 KILKENNY, Ireland -- I am packing for Taormina, a pleasant Sicilian destination. I plan to be enraptured by its charming atmosphere, its natural unspoilt beauty, its all-year-round mild climate, its preservation of local culture and ancient history, its friendly citizens. No one there will want to see me blog.
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11 September 2002 |
Margaret Kane -- More than 20 percent of respondents in an In-Stat/MDR survey said they would not use any type of broadband service in their main offices. The study surveyed 109 "key decision makers" at large businesses between April and July of 2002 and was reported by CNET. Blame financial troubles and the subsequent slowdown in technology investments.
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COSAC Runs in Naas Karlin Lillington -- The usual suspects attended COSAC, including a smattering of journos.
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Dan Bricklin -- The music industry has a death wish. "Given the slight dip in CD sales despite so many reasons for there to be a much larger drop, it seems that the effect of downloading, burning, and sharing is one of the few bright lights helping the music industry with their most loyal customers. Perhaps the real reason for some of the drop in sales was the shutdown of Napster and other crackdowns by the music industry."
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Remembering 9.11 One Year On FLAGSTAFF, Arizona -- Misty writes about 9.11.It's hard to believe that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center fell last year. I remember I was getting a drink of water from the drinking fountain outside of my math class when my best friend ran up to me and asked if I had heard. When she told me that an airplane flew into the tower, I thought it was a joke. I didn't think of any of the consequences. She said it was a terrorist attack, so I imagined a little airplane flown by the terrorist hitting the building to make a point. I didn't think innocent people were in the plane, thousands would be killed, and America would mourn for NYC, and then stand stronger than ever.My friend and I rushed into math, and instead of taking our test scheduled for that Tuesday, we watched the news. We watched the next tower fall, and witnessed the Pentagon burn. We were so proud of the passengers in the plane that banded together to make the plane crash in PA instead of hitting the other side of the Pentagon. Our teacher offered us his cell phone to call anywhere in the US if we had family that might be in danger. One boy took up the offer; 11 members of his family worked in the Pentagon. Five minutes later, he was crying for his 11 dead family members. They all worked in the same section that the plane hit. The rest of the week was constant news-watching and updating. People were still trying to figure out if their loved ones were indeed safe, trying to find a way back home from across country, and make up their minds on how many rights should be taken away to insure safety. Houses and cars pinned or taped up American flags, and people wore "United We Stand" or "I [heart] NY" and "NYFD" shirts. Everyone swore that they'd remember that day for the rest of their lives, and a year later with all the patriotic ads playing on the tv, memories flood into the heads of everyone.
This was posted to the weblog by Misty through Hotmail during her third week at Northern Arizona University.
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1D377 -- I used to work near the fire damage created by the jet that crashed into the Pentagon and the corridor is to reopen next week. Construction speed increased after construction supervisors started using wearable computers. The Xybernaut Mobile Assistant V wearable computers logged activities and shared info while on the move. They featured detached touch-screen displays, digital cameras and headsets fitted with an earphone and microphone, and included Protolex software that accepted verbal, text and graphical data into predesigned templates.
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WORLD-VOICES -- Good info regarding audioblogging via phone. The IVM can be used free as an answering machine (limited to a single voice mailbox application). If you intend to use more than one voice mail box, or the attendant menu function, you need to register the software and pay the reasonable (EUR 175 for "attendant professional license") fees.
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 Amy Harmon -- The Wayback Machine has discovered dozens of electronic memorials on the web. Those are separate entities, quite different from the selections ofexcellent news reportage on the day.
"The Web allows everybody to be a memorializer," said Jeffrey Hyson, a historian at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, who has studied Sept. 11 Web sites. "It's not just the family members or survivors that can claim some stake. There's a sense that anybody, no matter how distant their connection to 9/11, has the ability and the right to offer their version of some memorial."
The patchwork of Sept. 11 Web memorials includes Legacy.com, a commercial obituary site that created a special section for victims of the attacks, and CantorFamilies.com, where many of Cantor Fitzgerald's employees have made a mourning ritual of clicking through photographs and memories of their colleagues who died in the attacks.
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Dave Winer -- "What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn't see that 9-11 was tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective? What about famine in Africa? What about AIDS?" In its reflective commentary today, the Irish National Broadcaster politely pointed to data showing more people die of AIDS in Africa every month than perished in the collapse of the World Trade Center. Those less fortunate deserve perdurable coverage too.
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KILKENNY, Ireland -- I despise cars parked on sidewalks and will print a book of brightly coloured tickets to combat this parking blight. Aaron Donovan reports that concerned citizens are pitching a curbside battle against SUVs in NYC. "He walked to the car and, from a stack in his hand, took out a card colored the bright orange of a New York City parking ticket and imprinted with the word 'violation.' He slipped it under the windshield wiper."
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Ray Ozzie -- Here's an essay on Tyranny, Terror and Technology worth reading from Ray Ozzie's Weblog.
Ozzie believes that every organisation has rules laced with inter-communications within an organization, and these work like glue. Use too much and the enterprise is all gummed up with rules that get in the way of doing the job. Use too little and everyone is flying off in different directions, counter productive. The challenge is to get it just right, so that you have an agile team effort.
Things get complicated by the organization fluctuating in size, so you need different strategies for different scales of operation. Also there is a spread of individual skills of participants in the organization, so until you get everyone up to speed on something, there has to be another way of getting the job done. Any time things are changed, there will be transitional confusion.
I have worked in organizations that became too large and unwieldy. My colleague John Stanley reminded me how you have to allow for more networking time as you add more staff. In Ray Ozzie's mind, the permutations of all the different people who need to intercommunicate can bog down some things so that nothing can get done.
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 BELKIN -- Veteran cabling/adapter company Belkin now offers a new 11Mbps Wireless Cable/DSL Gateway Router (F5D6231-4). It has a 4-port 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switch, and supports a variety of gateway features, including DMZ (machine exposing), NAT, IPSec pass-through, and stateful packet inspection plus 128-bit WEP keys. Due out Nov. 1 with Windows drivers, and Mac support to follow, the Belkin list price is $150. The interesting part about this unit is a prefab setup wizard customized for ISP integration: when run, it should automatically configure your gateway for your ISP's particular setup. When he tested it, Hahn Choi found the lost more data on throughput than similar routers. Early adopters prefer the Netgear alternative.
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CNET -- Networking groups are looking at ways to permit roaming for Wi-Fi. This would make a WiFi notebook as communicative as a mobile phone.
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10 September 2002 |
WEB SIDE STORY.com -- It's not surprising that Microsoft won the browser war. But who would have thought five years ago that Microsoft would capture a 96 percent share of the market, more than it has in operating systems or desktop productivity applications?
But, there is an advantage to this market domination. Things like Marc Barrat's Active Bookmarks work elegantly in Internet Explorer and the team behind that coding benefitted from the critical mass of Microsoft's browser. And there's the emergence of the Flash browser. Macromedia's Flash Player 6 is actually a browser. They call it "a next-generation rich client" that integrates media, communications and applications functionality into a runtime that can deliver desktop-like (better) experiences both within the browser and standalone on desktops and devices. I think it's better than Internet Explorer.
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HYPERORG.com -- Watch the Tsunami.Net Crush Server tick down live from the Millbank Gallery in London. When it runs out of time, it will activate the industrial crusher attached to it, bearing 150-tonnes of brute force onto itself and terminating its existence.
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Adam Curry -- Senator Hillary Clinton was booed when she walked on stage last October at a rock concert in Madison Square Garden to benefit 9/11 victims. It was shown live by VH1 but, when the Viacom-owned cable channel replayed it sound technicians replaced the booing with cheering and applause. And that version is the permanent record VH1 put onto its DVD of the event.
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CNET News.com -- A wireless standard five times faster than Wi-Fi passed the first of several votes needed for approval from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. The draft of the 802.11g standard passed the first of several votes needed before it's ultimately approved. The IEEE said it intends to finalize the 802.11g standard by May 2003.
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news.google.com -- news.google is destined to be another category killer. The headlines appearing on the News Homepage come from a mathematical algorithm, based on how and where the stories appear elsewhere on the web. There are no human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines and no individual decides which stories get top placement. This occasionally results in some stories appearing to be out of context.
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Thinking Out Loud About Intellisign KILKENNY, Ireland -- What if routing of rich media content, such as old classic television shows, was as simple as routing TCP/IP?
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PBJ.cz -- A grassroots Czech movement plans to secede from the corrupt telco monopoly by putting wireless access-points on roofs across Prague.
"The connection is already built, and it's real broadband, guaranteed connection, so the issue of Internet connection is solved," Janda said.
TransgasNet's head of product management Radek Majer said that the company has a commercial contract with one of CZFree.net's members on the connectivity supply. The contract doesn't include the access route fee because the connection to TransgasNet's node is wireless. He said that although CZFree.net's connectivity comes from TransgasNet, the company doesn't provide the services directly to customers of CZFree.net because the network is independent from the company. However, CZFree.net can indirectly raise the number of customers who will be able to connect to TransgasNet's backbone access, Majer said.
"The good side of the project is that it can connect a lot of people, and the [backbone] connectivity is relatively cheap," Janda said. The price of the connectivity is then shared between the users, with no extra fees.
There are currently around 15 to 20 functioning nodes in Prague, and the actual number of users is still probably fewer than 100, although an exact count is impossible. However, the nature of the network makes it very easy to connect to (especially for users with laptops and Wi-Fi cards), and another 320 users are in line to put up their own nodes."
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Karlin Lillington -- In her technoculture blog, Karlin notes a big mistake in mobile commerce is "is expecting mobiles to be mini versions of the web. They are complementary to the web/net, enabling briefer forms of commerce such as paying a parking meter, accessing brief snippets of info, downloading a ringtone." Or controlling signs?
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AP -- Many college and university librarians have modified long-standing policies and upgraded facilities in an attempt to lure students into libraries, away from Internet-connected dorm rooms. After years of
prohibiting food and drinks, the University of North Texas library now
has a Starbucks in a common area. Food and drinks are now allowed in
almost all of the library. The University of Richmond added more
comfortable chairs and computer workstations to its library and saw an
18 percent increase in the number of students visiting the library.
Samuel Demas of Carleton College in Minnesota said his institution has
implemented art exhibits and literary events to draw students into the
library. He said the events recalled a time when the library was the academic and social center of the campus.
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WASHINGTON POST.com -- If you want to attract hundreds to your online course offerings, pitch something that deals with Homeland Security. That's what the The American Public University System has done. And in the process, it landed $10m in funding from ABS Capital Partners. APUS offers online classes in military and general education to more than 5,000 current students, many of whom are military personnel and who benefit from the school's courses being available on the Internet. The venture capitalists were attracted by APUS's offerings in intelligence studies and homeland security.
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Why I Lost my September 9th
KILKENNY, Irleand -- Bad set of computer crashes yesterday when using WiFi and Radio upstreaming. And for the first time, my local installation of Radio wiped the its server side content clean. This happened after a bad crash while uploading to the remote server. I've some back-ups, but only for 10 per cent of my work. Actually, I have the back-up power of every source in my aggregator, so if I really want to repost the stuff, I can merely trawl the usual suspects.
What I won't be able to easily recreate is a series of thoughts about the daunting task of making a submission for government funding ofr wireless technologies. Like Karlin Lillington, I am bothered by a perception that the Irish Minister of Finance believes technology was the industry of the 90s. As a result of that mistaken belief, he is slowrolling initiatives to create internationally competitive broadband networks. I work inside this industry sector and cannot stand by and permit this kind of misguided perception steer government policy. Fortunately, I have a garralous local representative who loves adding sparks to the ministerial discussions.
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BBC.co.uk -- NewsOnline's public RSS service was only intended to include the front page, technology, UK and world. At the moment, my news aggregator cannot harvest these RSS feeds. The Beeb will remove some of the extra feeds we discovered on the Internet last week.
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08 September 2002 |
PHILO75.com -- Television as we know it was invented by a 14 year old farm boy from Utah named Philo T. Farnsworth. That's not what I learned when growing up in the shadows of RCA's plant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Could you imagine the world when the Internet turns 75?
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M4IF.org -- Yahoo will deploy Real's Helix Universal Server, which means Yahoo is support MPEG-4 compatible formatss. Meanwhile, Microsoft rolls out Windows Media Player 9 which does not support MPEG-4.
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Andrew McCaskey -- "This Blog has run for over 70 years of continuous Print, Radio and Internet commentary. Topic is a daily column series written and presented by Andrew McCaskey for radio broadcast and print without interruption since February, 1932." Andrew has written 500 words a day since 1932. Now he is blogging all those words.
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KILKENNY, Ireland -- No politician has doorstepped me on the Nice Treaty and that indicates the local Fianna Fail machine is a bit miffed that it was not rewarded following the 2002 General Election. A few years ago, Bertie Ahern could simply tell his party members to get out on the stump. Now, his personal power has waned. I think it's because his inner circle has upset formerly loyal party members. The local activists here do not like PJ Mara, Martin Mackin and Peter McDonagh. They have stoked up a simmering backlash against Dublin-generated public policy, like using nice Czech girls to push for a YES vote on Nice.
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CNN.com -- Kevin Warwick has started talking with parents who want microchips implanted to their children to track their whereabouts. In today's paranoid climate, where kids are abducted every week, this will be more pervasive than Warwick's plan to track the depth of orgasms through microchips. Warwick's idea has attracted full page coverage, following the panic aftermath in the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in the UK.
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What Helps Entrepreneurs the Most ERNST AND YOUNG -- After analysing business start-ups, Ernst and Young discovered more than 90 per cent have never used or relied on government aid. And not many entrepreneurs rely on family assistance. Business founders benefit from the help of collaborators and colleagues. Blogging helps connect to them.
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Smart Use of Business Investment Scheme BES -- Ireland's Business Expansion Scheme allowance permits claims to a maximum of EUR 31,750 against income tax from an investment in an approved new business venture. This will be one way we can reward financial promoters of the Intellisign.
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We Should Pay for Rubbish KILKENNY, Ireland -- Some things should never be free. Rubbish collection should not be free. Water should not be free. Yet all around me, people rant on about how our waste should go away every week and our water should flow without question. A clean environment does not come cheap. It starts by paying for what we dispose and charging for what is used.
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FIT.ie -- IT Training methods for the long-term unemployed pioneered by a Dublin project down the street from my Santry office have been franchised by FIT to Canada and Italy. FIT also got a EUR 50,000 grant from Microsoft Europe last week.
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THURLES, Ireland -- Interim figures produced last week by iTouch, the mobile information firm in which Independent News and Media owns a 50 per cent stake, show little promise for the company to rebound to its STG 70p level. Its shares are trading at STG 14.10 currently. The company is carrying accumulated losses of over STG 31m on the balance sheet after two years of operation.
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CAR GADGETS.co.uk -- Someday I am going to clip a radar detector back into my car.
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Dean Allen -- Distraught that he couldn't get a sandwich spreader in France, Dean Allen vented his frustrations and had his need fulfilled within 18 minutes. Remarkable thing, this Internet.
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FIRST TUESDAY.ie -- What kind of tech ventures are worth funding? Barry Maloney (Benchmark Capital) and Frank Kenny (Delta) will give their thoughts to First Tuesday in Dublin's Berkeley Court Hotel, Dublin, on Tuesday evening (admission EUR 15). Benchmark Europe's aim is to invest in around 45 companies for an average of about $10m a deal. Maloney is bullish on Ireland's chance of becoming the Silicon Valley of Europe, but has warned that better resources are needed to nurture Irish entrepreneurs. He points to the lack of people capable of founding and driving businesses as the main inhibitor to Ireland's potential. Maloney has privately invested in Dublin software firm Sepro, who recently completely a EUR 1m implementation of its e-Rate software with Vodafone Ireland.
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In Defense of Infrastructural Needs THURLES, Ireland -- As the Irish cabinet begins talking about building a second 85,000 capacity stadium, I wonder if anyone around the table will make undertakings in defense of infrastructure? The Irish government has demonstrated its inability to bring positive, First World infrastructure to the country.
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Irish Researchers Looking East in Sixth Framework
THURLES, Ireland -- Irish researchers are planning submissions to the Sixth Framework Programme, an EU initiative backed with EUR 17.5 through 2006. If done correctly, Irish submissions will lead to and sustain high valued-added activities and jobs, something that those unemployed in North County Tipperary would welcome. More than 270 Irish firms took part in over 1,110 projects in the Fourth Framework, worth EUR 200m of EU funding into Ireland. FP6 puts an emphasis on participation from new countries, those part of the EU Enlargement. That kind of emphasis will help dampen the xenophobia allowed to remain unchecked in pockets of rural Ireland.
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KILKENNY, Ireland -- I'm going to let my blog lapse for a week, starting Friday, September 13th. I'm going to go offline for a week because I recognise the technology has dulled my senses. I'm going to observe a week of data silence. I will pull out my ISDN line, put my WiFi card into a desk drawer and divert all mobile phone calls to voice mail. It will take some real focus to convince myself that I don't absolutely positively need always-on communications. So when I feel myself falter, I'll remember the faces of my Amish neighbours back home, who will never have any of these things and whose weekends always seem to be rewardingly person-to-person.
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SEMANTIC STUDIOS.com -- The coming era of nanotechnology and Internet-aware wireless devices ushers in the concept of ambient findabilty.
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EFF.org -- Join the EFF and get 
