Ged Carroll

Category: wireless | 無線 |무선 네트워크 | 無線

This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.

Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.

I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.

4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great

 

  • 3 & Wind merger + more things

    Consolidation in Italy as Wind, 3 ink €21.8bn merger | TotalTelecom – I I hope that it won’t affect 3 UK roaming? I wouldn’t be surprised if 3 did similar deals in other mature European markets like the UK. Li Ka Shing is no one’s fool and wireless is mature and capital intensive. More wireless related posts here.

    Fancy 10 Gbps home broadband? Broadcom’s built the guts of it | The Register – fibre dreams?

    Less Money, Mo’ Music & Lots of Problems: A Look at the Music Biz | REDEF – interesting business analysis of the music industry

    Apple denies plan to sell mobile services directly to consumers | Reuters – interesting that they went to the trouble of denying it. It might make sense for them to have a corporate MVNO for their staff

    Nikkei report paints a disturbing picture of Konami | SiliconAngle – PR trainwreck

    The Unemployable Programmer – a nice counterpoint to the ‘get everyone programming’ meme

    Walt Disney Animation Studios | Hyperion technology – interesting write-up of their Hyperion render engine

    Apple is testing a Siri voicemail transcription service – Business Insider – will it work any better than SpinVox?

    brandchannel: Every Product Placement in ‘Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation’ – love the early press release quoted and remember getting to site in college

    FBI Struggling With Cybersecurity Because of Shit Pay and Drug Tests – both of which says a lot about the war on drugs and government getting tech

    Official Google Blog: Everything in its right place – downsizing of Google+. The move to break it up is viewed by many as a defeat, it also makes sense when one thinks of app constellations, though I cannot help think of Brad Garlinghouse’s famous ‘peanut butter manifesto’ at Yahoo! nine years earlier. Though that was a blatant grab for political power, it resonates with some of what seems to be happening at Google in terms of retrenchment

    Why the fear over ubiquitous data encryption is overblown – The Washington Post – interesting op ed by a former head of the NSA, a former secretary of homeland security and a former US defence secretary challenging the intelligence industrial complex demands for weaker encryption and more surveillance legislation

  • Hacknet + more things

    Hacknet

    Some Australian developers have made an immersive game about hacking that will be distributed on Steam when released. It’s called Hacknet and here’s the trailer.