April 6th, 2010
On the same day that a Federal Court struck down the FCC’s right to regulate broadband traffic AT&T has introduced its mini-tower.
The mini-tower is an ingenious little device that boost AT&T’s weak network coverage by translating the cell phone signal and transmitting information over a user’s home network network instead of relying on AT&T’s balky towers. This concept isn’t unique to AT&T (Sprint and Verizon also offer similar services) but astoundingly consumers not only pay for the bandwidth, the cell minutes (which still count against monthly totals) and also $150 for the device.
This new system puts broadband Internet providers, like the cable companies and actually AT&T, in an interesting position. Why should they have to cover the cost of sending AT&T voice signals over their networks? This is not a problem if AT&T is both the consumers cellular and broadband supplier. But since a Federal court struck down the FCC’s right to enforce net neutrality — the principle that broadband suppliers would have to carry all data at the same rate — Comcast or other broadband providers appear to have the right limit bandwidth used by AT&T mini-towers.
Maybe AT&T’s greed in both charging consumers and using their broadband access instead of providing a working cellular network will end up being a good thing… if it forces AT&T to support net neutrality.
Tags: ATT, Net Neutrality, Technology
Posted in Articles, The Future? | No Comments »
April 5th, 2010
Laura Sydell’s Morning Edition segment about the iPad has some clever quotes and a captivating headline, but misses a crucial distinction: the iPad
may be the end of computing as we know it but not the end of the Internet.
Here are are five reasons her story went awry:
- The closed world of the App Store may be a mistake, but the Internet has enabled cloud-based applications like Gmail, Flickr or Photoshop Online. While you cannot download these applications, you do not need to. That too is a powerful legacy of the Internet.
- Many iPad and iPhone content producers are confusing Apps with Websites. HTML 5 allows the offline viewing of content. If the only difference between a media company’s Apple-approved App and their Website is off-line viewing they are missing the point. App store items should take advantage of something device specific — like the accelerometer or the microphone. Otherwise just make a Web app.
- Flash has nothing to do with the legacy of the Internet. Flash technology is every bit the inaccessible Gated Community that the Apple App store is. Worse still, Flash makes Web-content inaccessible and violates most Web standards. If anything Apple, inadvertently, may be saving the Internet.
- Apple is not marketing the iPad as a replacement for a laptop or netbook. An issue not widely discussed is the fact that the iPad needs to be synced to a computer running iTunes before it can be used. The iPad is meant to be a new kind of device — but most importantly an additional device.
- As long as Safari still has a prominent place on the iPhone the Internet is alive and well. Will the iPad change the Web? Maybe. But if Websites have been created semantically, a new CSS layer will just present the information differently — everything the Internet is meant to do.
Tags: Apple, Flash, iPad, Web Design
Posted in Articles, Mobile Design, The Future? | No Comments »
