IM and REST: First Class Events?. After posting the previous piece about IM and REST, I happened to see a reference to work DJ Admans is doing with weblog updates and Jabber on Scripting News.  The basic idea, as I understand it, is to use Jabber in lieu of something like MQSeries or JMS to notify people of changes to weblogs.  I see the usefulness of that: remember those discussions in your undergraduate architecture class about polling vs. interrupts? [Phil Windley: Instant Messaging]

Mitch Kapor: Linux' Journey to the Mainstream Desktop. Mitch Kapor is talking on "Linux' Journey to the Mainstream Desktop." OSAF's larger mission embraces more than just Chandler. Mitch recently initiated a project on behalf of OSAF to "take a careful look at the state of Linux on the desktop, and asked Bart Decrem to spearhead a short-term research project to assess the current situation and trends." You can read that report here (PDF). [Phil Windley: Open Source]

Bruce Eckel on Python.

A Conversation with Bruce Eckel

Bruce Eckel wrote the best-selling books Thinking in C++ and Thinking in Java, but for the past several years he's preferred to think in Python. Two years ago, Eckel gave a keynote address at the 9th International Python Conference entitled "Why I love Python." He presented ten reasons he loves programming in Python in "top ten list" style, starting with ten and ending with one.

In this interview, which is being published in four installments, Bill Venners asks Bruce Eckel about each of these ten points.

• In Part I: Python and the Programmer, Bruce Eckel explains why he feels Python is "about him," how minimizing clutter improves productivity, and the relationship between backwards compatibility and programmer pain.
• In Part II: The Zen of Python, Bruce Eckel explains why he prefers Python's valuing programmer productivity over program performance, Python's you-want-it-you-can-have-it attitude, and Python's zen-like learning curve.
• In Part III: Type Checking and Techie Control, Bruce Eckel explains why he prefers Python's latent type checking and techie control of language evolution.
• In Part IV: Python and the Tipping Point, Bruce Eckel talks about how Python's minimal finger typing allows programmers to focus on the task, not the tool, generating a productivity that makes more projects feasible.

[Kevin Altis' Weblog]

Who Owns Gartner?. An important article in Information Week. "Silver Lake Partners, a Silicon Valley private equity-investment firm, gained 49.4 million shares of Gartner stock, or about 38% of outstanding shares...[Silver Lake's limited partners] include more than 150 'leading technology executives from the top technology firms.' Some of the names you might recognize: Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates."

Should any analyst firm accept an investment that's so closely related to the vendors on which it reports? Isn't there an inherent conflict of interest? Gates and Ellison may not share a singular view of the marketplace, but doesn't an investment like associate Gartner with the major vendors as opposed to smaller vendors and the open-source community which has no $$ to invest? [Blogarithms]

OBSAI Completes Full Set of Specifications for Base Stations Telecom&Mobility news

Helsinki, 6 November, 2003 — OBSAI Completes Full Set of Specifications for Base Stations

OBSAI thanks its members for their hard work and gears up for the next challenge

The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative (OBSAI) - the leading industry forum of over 50 telecommunications companies creating open specifications for base station architecture - announced today the availability of the OBSAI interface specification for the radio and baseband functions within the base station. The addition of the radio module interface specification means that OBSAI has now defined a complete set of interface specifications to cover the functions of all key base station modules: control; transport; baseband and radio.

'This completes the industry's first comprehensive set of open, internal interfaces between all major base station modules,' says John S. Csapo, Senior Vice President, Samsung and OBSAI Secretary. 'We have successfully reached the challenging targets we set our members last year and they have all contributed extensive time and effort to arrive at the best solution for each interface. We would like to thank them all - this has been a truly co-operative industry effort. We are now working on the next stage of the OBSAI roadmap and we look forward to similar commitment from our members in reaching our next targets.'

Comments Jason Chapman, Principal Analyst, Gartner, ' With the OBSAI interfaces now specified, the member companies can focus on developing compliant products. With targeted R&D spend; vendors can look to address the mobile operators' need for timely and efficient radio infrastructure. With standardised internal interfaces the structure of the infrastructure value chain will be challenged, as solution vendors seek to integrate best-in-breed modules providing value added integration, management and optimisation services on top of the core hardware.'

Commented OBSAI member, Alcatel, "Alcatel supports the definition of open interfaces and believes that OBSAI is one of the ways forward in base station evolutions." Jochen Seiss, Product Manager, Alcatel.

Greg Aasen, Chief Technology Officer, PMC-Sierra commented, 'The establishment of standard interfaces will lead to the development of interoperable and highly integrated base station components which will, in turn, lower total system costs and stimulate the wireless industry. PMC-Sierra's involvement in OBSAI enhanced our understanding of our customers' needs. We expect to have our first OBSAI compliant product ready for release very soon.'

The key value proposition of OBSAI is that it provides a well-defined, fundamental framework for the creation of complete specifications, ultimately leading to high quality base stations. An architecture that provides a clear functional split and detailed internal interface specifications allows companies to create modules that are truly compatible in all OBSAI compliant base stations. OBSAI enables a new, competitive market for interoperable modules, which will ultimately lead to PC-like economies of scale, resulting in significantly lower costs.

"RadiSys is pleased with the fast progress that OBSAI has made on the specifications. We strongly believe in and participate in industry initiatives such as OBSAI to gain interoperability and economy of scale." said Venkataraman Prasannan, senior director for RadiSys. " We have been implementing these concepts in prototype modules and are working closely with our current base-station customers in transitioning to the newer specifications"

Full details on how to join OBSAI and participate in its work and to also utilize the OBSAI specifications for the benefit of your own company please go to: www.obsai.org

About the Open Base Station Architecture Initiative The Open Base Station Architecture Initiative was formed in September 2002. It comprises over 50 members: Hyundai, LG Electronics, Nokia, Samsung, ZTE; Adlink, Alcatel, Altera, Analog Devices, Andrew, APC, Benetel, Capitel, CIM Technologies, Efore, Elektrobit, Elvior, Ept, Filtronic, Force Computers, Harting, IC4IC, IDT, Intel, Kathrein, Lattice, Marconi, Mindspeed, molex, Morphics, Motorola, National Semiconductor, NEC, Panasonic, PIC Engineering, Picochip, PMC-Sierra, Powerwave, Radical Horizon, RadiSys, Remec, RFS, Sanmina SCI, STMicroelectronics, Symmetricom; Temex, Texas Instruments, Wiseband) Cogent Chipware, Rohde & Schwarz, TelASIC and Xilinx. OBSAI has established open specifications for 3 main base station internal interfaces for future Base Station development. Further information from: www.obsai.org.

affic Monitor of Taloustutkimus. During this period, there were over six million visits to the portal's services. Of the visitors, 78 per cent has broadband access. About one-third of the visitors were Elisa's own access customers.

The Elisa.net services have a very regular base of visitors. In this sense, the portal approaches more and more the traditional media. 70 per cent of the portal visitors have a very positive or fairly positive view of Elisa as a company and provider of telecommunication services. *

Owing to the increase in broadband connections, the demand for video content has doubled since the beginning of 2003 - the videos of the Elisa.TV site had over 110,000 hits in October. Other steady favourites of visitors are the Älypää (Superbrain) quiz, cartoon-like game Habbo Hotel Kultakala, Koulukaverit and Inttikaverit sites (School and Army Mates), Ohjelmat.info, which contains information on TV and radio programmes in a compact format, and the Search function.

IT-Analysis.com - Will the Process Integrators Integrate?. New Technology popping up: looking at the problem afresh and particularly with the advent of standards (XML, J2CA, BPEL…) the cost of entry has gone down in the last couple of years. Start-up companies without any legacy integration technology can develop innovative solutions and be able to sell them as modern, flexible, tighter and less expensive. [Organic BPEL]

Liftshare.com (Clay Shirky). To illustrate the links between internet and real-world community, I usually point to MeetUp or UpMyStreet conversations. Now I can add LiftShare.com, a UK-based site for organizing car pools. Because this involves letting someone else into yoru car, or vice-versa,... [Many-to-Many]

Socializer: Peer-to-peer + Social + Location based (Clay Shirky). IBM has a tool called Socializer, designed for discovering and connecting to people and services in the same location (taking “same subnet” as a proxy for same location.) In goals, it’s far more generalizable than Trepia, but less grandiose than... [Many-to-Many]

Biz 2.0 names social networking tools the "Technology of the Year" (Clay Shirky). Via Dave Pollard, at How to Save the World:The November edition of Business 2.0 (only available on-line to subscribers) has selected Social Networking Applications as the Technology of the Year. Mentioned in the survey are Ryze, LinkedIn, Friendster, Zero Degrees,... [Many-to-Many]

Sony's QRIO humanoid robot. Sony has launched QRIO (pronounced "curio"), their humanoid robot, cousin of AIBO, the robot dog. In addition to bipedal walking, it has stereo vision and hearing, as well as (supposedly) the ability to recognize faces and voices. It's motion capabilities... [Jefferson Provost]