Connecting the Dots

Apple: Wrong or Right?

Over the past few years, I've been in numerous discussions about how social media (and blogging in specific) is driving a new level of transparency in marketing, public relations and corporate communications, while also providing unprecedented opportunity for thought leaders to carve out a niche in new and powerful ways.

In my consulting engagements when talk comes around to discussing crowdsourcing and ways to spark creativity and innovation through social media means, Apple often is brought up as an example of how to innovate: "We've got to create an iPod" is often brought up as a successful innovation.

Often this occurs without much talk of how Apple really succeeded with it by focusing on the entire value chain. Nailing the value chain was the secret sauce in delivering a three-tiered value chain offering by tying that iPod to a desktop application (iTunes) so people could rip their CD's and manage their music, alongside that same application (iTunes) acting as a Web hosted application (iTunes connected to an iTunes Store). Then they offered this whole package up to an industry on its knees as its product (music) was being stolen out from underneath them.

But then I'm quizzed by clients. "Hey, wait just a dang minute Borsch. You're promoting and pushing us to be transparent and let employees blog when a company you laud, worked for and own stock in is polar opposite?" Apple is a different beast that needed to be opaque since they were close to being out of business in the 1990's, but the problem is they haven't changed direction about their lack of transparency now that they're a resounding success.

I've been troubled by that paradox until just now.

Who Cares if Apple Focuses on the Enterprise?

Ever since Mac OS X Server shipped in 1999 and the desktop version in early 2001, many Apple and enterprise I.T. watchers have pontificated about Apple possibly moving into enterprise sales in a big way and making it a focus of effort.

On a scale of 1-10 (with "10" being hyperfocused on a strategic market), I believe Apple's interest in the enterprise is a "2".

My friend, Graeme Thickins (blog; business), sent a few of us an eWeek article today entitled, "Apple Goes Enterprise." The authors premise? That enterprise I.T. is clueless unless they seriously consider Mac OS X Server and Apple's Xserve or Xsan hardware for their server room due to the world-class aspects of these products and his argument was on the merits of what Apple offers.

I'd agree they're worth a serious look, but I see one huge caveat to this article from the point of view of someone who was a manufacturer's rep for Apple in the early 1980's, worked again for the company after Jobs came back in 1996 for three years, was in leadership positions in the enteprise software space (e.g., Vignette; Lawson Software) and have thought long and hard about what Apple is up to while simultaneously knowing what it takes to kowtow to and please enterprise I.T. folks.

The enterprise wants every conceivable feature and typically places their bets on technology momentum, a new class of product or a vendor if they deliver a corresponding support infrastructure (i.e., a vendor that invests in support for enterprises specifically) or demand is off-the-charts high. Currently Apple's support for the enterprise is modest...at best...and many of Apple's former resellers (who could support the enterprise) are gone due to the Apple Store juggernaut.

In a January 2000 Fortune magazine interview, Jobs said this about Apple's new directions -- including any sort of focus on enterprise sales -- in response to a line of questioning about why they wouldn't pursue the enterprise after Apple's reenergized and growing sales as well as the then well accepted "jelly bean shaped" iMac:

Apple II Forever?

Today's Macworld "Stevenote" was interesting and brought back memories. In the Spring of 1984, I was in San Francisco for the Apple II Forever rollout of the Apple IIc, a small desktop machine which was quite compact but still needed its little green screen monitor (I was with a manufacturer's rep firm out of college and Apple was our major line...and this was before they hired their own direct sales force).

Though some are already pointing out some of the Macbook Air's shortcomings (e.g., non-user replaceable battery; only one USB port) I still have to admit to being amazed at the power we have in our hands compared to what I've lived with as the personal computer industry has evolved.

My biggest pump today? The iPhone's new software. I've already bookmarked some Google Maps locations and created two screens of oft-used web sites that I've "clipped" and made into icons to instantly go to a page...and the exact part of a page all zoomed in and so forth (see the demo here).

Take a walk down memory lane and watch this video from the Apple II Forever event in San Francisco in April, 1984 and you'll see that all the cool stuff announced today is but a milestone on the way as we walk into our technology future.

Think the Internet has progressed?

Tonight I spent some time roaming around inside the Internet Archive and came across the video below from a San Francisco public television show, The Computer Chronicles.

Here's what it says at the Archive for this video, "It wasn't quite the World Wide Web yet, but everybody started hearing about this thing called "the Internet" in 1993. It was being called the Information Superhighway then. This program looks at the earliest stages of the Internet including Aladdin Systems SITComm, a Macintosh communications program for Internet access, and the WELL (Whole Earth Lectronic Link), an early online community. Also featured is a visit to the former Bell Labs in New Jersey (now Bellcore) for demonstrations of internet based teleconferencing, video on demand, ISDN, and optical network technology; a preview of the World Wide Web as used at NASA; a visit to where it all began, ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency in Virgnia; and a look at the Internet Multicasting Service in Washington, the first Internet radio station. Guests include Brendan Kehoe, author of "Zen and the Art of the Internet", Howard Rheingold, author of "The Virtual Community", Dr. Robert Kahn, former found of ARPA, and Carl Malamud, author of "Exploring the Internet". Originally broadcast in 1993."

Take a peek at this now 14 year old video and realize how far we've come...and where we'll undoubtedly be 14 years from now as the rate of change accelerates.

Mac? Windows? What's a fanboy to do?

After posting yesterday on the "Top Five Reasons that Leopard will be Apple's tipping point", it just reinforced in me that the depth of passion on the various sides of the computing table still exists (Windows; Mac; Linux). 

You know what I think is happening that's actually accelerating fanboy-dom and compelled so many people to comment? Those of us on the 'net, and extensively using computers, have our faces in them for more total hours than ever before. With the explosion in laptop sales -- most of which have Wifi cards in them -- these tools are being schlepped all over the place and used as the general purpose devices they're meant to be. All day, every day we're accessing Web 2.0 sites, using applications, editing video and audio, communicating through Skype and webcams and much more.

So people naturally invest dollars and then themselves emotionally in their chosen computing platform. Most of us customize our device with wallpaper, sounds, applications and -- because of ever larger hard drives and our extensive use spawning more digital files than ever -- we structure and archive our digital lives with these devices. So it stands to reason we all have heightened awareness of our time investment as well as being intellectually invested in learning how our computers work and where stuff is located. Having anyone intimate that your choice is wrong and that you're a schnub for choosing your computing platform is like whacking at a hornet's nest.

As I write this I've had 60,000 pageviews of that post, nearly 80 comments under it and more than 500 comments on the Digg submission. Too many to address individually (and many are trolls being anonymous and nasty and are not due a response).

Windows and Linux have many, many compelling features and attractive aspects and run on cheaper hardware. But to me the obstacles and barriers to using them as productively as I do the Mac are too high (and, in fact, I have Ubuntu Linux and WinXP on this Macbook Pro now). Using these other OS'es cause me to spend a lot more time "twiddling bits" than being creative and productive.

I'm pleased with the platform I've chosen (Mac) and the result is I've invested many thousands of dollars in dozens of machines, applications, training and knowledge. Having used all three platforms extensively for many years, my chosen one allows my staff and I to be more productive and our output is remarkable ranging from color print to ebooks; video; audio; and much more. Our tech support need and hours invested in twiddling bits is now 10% of what it was when we were running Windows. The bonus is no adware. No spyware. No viruses.

Is *everyone* buying a Mac?

At all the major tech conferences I attend, all the alpha geeks and the fashionistas are walking around with Mac's (hmmm....am I a geek or a bon vivant? I know what my kids would say!). I often find myself in the front of an audience and scanning the crowd of people with their laptops is interesting...but there is an accelerating number of glowing Apple logos at these places where influencers meet.

I'm getting together with a friend and colleague tomorrow for one key reason *and* because he too took delivery of a new Macbook Pro last week. This is a guy that has used Windows machines his entire life.

Even the dyed-in-the-wool PC guy, Chris Pirillo, has gone Mac.

My 18 year old daughter works at a local Apple Store and we talk often about how busy the place is all the time. Whenever I go there, it's a constant and steady stream of purchasers. She's indicated that this back-to-school season is "awesome" with sales even though no analyst would buy more stock due to THAT recommendation.

It's funny...when I bought my Macbook Pro some time ago I purchased Parallels and an OEM version of Windows XP for $49 (and I threw away the $10 sound card I had to buy to get it) thinking that I'd need to continue to run Windows apps. You know what? In six months I've opened it up about 10 times. I play with my install of Ubuntu Linux more than I use Windows.

Why is this happening? The platform works; it's elegant and quiet; based on unix; secure with no spyware or adware; great user interface; perfectly positioned for user generated content; compatible with Windows in many ways; in short, about anything people want to do today (other than Windows-centric proprietary applications) can be done with a Mac.

Do you rely on electricity? Roads & bridges? The Internet?

This weekend I've had a lot of time to reflect on how fragile and dependent we all are on infrastructure and distribution. All of these thoughts have also had me remember being a kid during the 1970's energy crisis (with lines at gas stations) and times when pending blizzards caused people to make a run on grocery stores stripping the shelves of certain foods, water and other staples.

We're far too dependent on so much infrastructure and distribution systems that most of us either take for granted or simply expect will always be there.

The Interstate 35W bridge collapse two weeks ago was the first stunning blow about the frailty of infrastructure and a wake-up call for all of us. I've been reading a tremendous amount about needed bridge and roadway repairs in the US and it seems as though every state (as well as the Federal government) is suddenly taking action.

Yesterday morning's storm here in Minnesota knocked out our power at 3am Saturday and it's expected to fixed by close-of-business on Tuesday!  It's only affecting 45,000 people here now, so this is a local story. But what a pain in the butt it is to be without power and, thank goodness, my neighbors behind us have power so I've run a contractor grade extension cord so I can plug in my refrigerator and sump pump.

When there have been huge electrical outages there have been outcries (and I wrote about it here and you can read more about our crumbling power grid here). But since these outages have yet to be in the same horrific category as a catastrophic bridge collapse tragedy, not much is being done. I also remember Reddy Killowatt, the electric industry spokescartoon who encouraged us to use electricity. He's retired now having outlived his usefulness in a time of energy conservation.

I'm sitting here in a restaurant this morning with free Wifi since my Internet access at home is out (no electricity...no working cable modem). Thankfully I have an office a short drive away with power so it's not too horrible and I can still get work done, but my 12 year old son keeps asking me how he can get on the 'net from home. There are some silver linings to having all the electrical stuff off, but I'm not too interested in living off the grid just yet.

Yesterday afternoon I almost purchased a portable generator. Instead, I'll be buying a standby generator (which runs on natural gas) that I can plug into my home circuit system and prioritize my heat and air conditioning; sump pump (critical since my basement flooded last year when the power went out!); refrigerator; and a few other items so I'm not at the mercy of Xcel Energy or a kind neighbor. The cost will be roughly $5k installed and a whole house generator (instead of a limited number of items) is about $13k. What's enlightening to me has been the exercise of adding up all the watts I pull in my house and realizing how tough (and expensive) it is to be self sufficient with energy!

The small outage of Internet hosting I referenced in my post is so laughingly small that it went almost unnoticed by the general public. But as more and more of us map our businesses, our social networks and our communications on the 'net, the potential for horrific and catastrophic outages -- though unlikely to take lives -- may finally get people to wake up to our dependency on bridges, our distribution system, electricity, the Internet, and all the other systems and processes we now take for granted.

"Father of Supercomputers" Seymour Cray

Yesterday my son and I (on our 8th Annual Dad & Son Adventure) drove into Chippewa Falls, WI since I'd never seen the town and was curious as to why Seymour Cray (seen at left below), the "father of supercomputers" placed the R&D arm of Cray Research there.

My 12 year old is like most: his eyes roll up when I tell him we're stopping by a museum. I've learned to set hard limits on time ("we'll only spend X minutes there and then decide if we want to stay") which works well so I can always get him to agree to at least take a peek.

Turns out the museum wasn't open officially yesterday, but they let us wander around on our own and read the signs within the small exhibit area.

In many ways looking at the early Control Data computers was like seeing a set from the movie Dr. Strangelove. But what was really fascinating to me was the early wiring diagrams for 1950's era computers that were drawn by two women at drafting tables from the design specifications Seymour Cray put together. That, coupled with the mass of wires embedded in the early Cray supercomputers, seems incredibly inefficient by today's standards.

What impressed my son -- especially when I pointed out that the RAM in his Nintendo DS stored as much data as one of those HUGE 26" platters seen in the photo with a CD and floppy disks for comparison. The sign read, "This 26 inch platter weighs approximately six pounds and holds a total of 4 million bytes of information, 2 million bytes (2 megabytes) on each side. (Abbreviated 2MB.)

The colored 3.5 inch disks currently in use today hold 1.44 megabytes each, so only three disks would be needed to store the same amount of information as the 26 inch platter.

A current recordable compact disk (CD-R, below) holds 700 megabytes (700MB) and weighs approximately one ounce. This CD will hold the same amount of information as 175 platters, which would weigh 1,055 pounds. No wonder these disks earned the name "compact" and are so popular!"

Since I was born in the late 1950's, all of this evolution has occurred in my lifetime. I remember a guy across the street from me who was going to "get in to the computer business with this company called Control Data" which seemed pretty exotic in the late 1960's. I still have some measure of sadness-from-afar at the demise of Control Data and how the computing business ended and Minnesota became a relative backwater in technology.

It's important for kids to truly understand the evolution of computing as well as all the other things upon which we build our collective future. In the same way that people like Seymour Cray are not studied in schools, I think about inventors like Dean Kamen who have done amazing things too and are not lauded at all -- but my guy knows about Kamen since we talk about his successes and his failures.

So how did our museum peek go? The proof was when we hopped in the car afterwards and I asked my son what he thought: "It was cool Dad...I liked it and those old computers were amazing."

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs?

Often I take Robert X. Cringely's columns with a grain-of-salt, but this one entitled, "Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership" really hit me since I make my living on Internet-centric management consulting and view broadband as the key enabler of business going forward. Cringely's article is an important one to read if you care about US competitiveness in the future.

Back in the mid-1990's I had an ISDN line with a whopping 128kbps access for $69 per month. Incredibly fast at the time, I even considered their bonded option for 256kbps (well over $100 per month) but I wanted to stay married. Today I have 8mbps per second downstream and 768kbps upstream for essentially the same price.

I have friends in San Francisco with 10mbps symmetrical (both upload and download) for under $100 a month. Others using Verizon's fiber (FIOS) and getting 15mbps down, 2mbps up for $50 per month.

But Cringely talks about the 100mbps speeds in Japan, others have complained about them being ahead of us too and the OECD's April, 2007 report (which showed the US at 25th in global broadband penetration and speed) is open to debate. So is it important for us to have competitiveness in broadband speeds and why aren't we -- the inventor and creator of the Internet -- in the world's leading position for broadband speed and penetration?

When you think about the relative sizes of countries vs. US states, you begin to get a feel for the enormity of the problem. Japan is roughly the size of Montana, for example, and (as of 2001), 79% of the population lived in urban areas with ~20% in Tokyo alone. That makes it considerably easier to provide a high speed broadband infrastructure for the overwhelming majority of Japanese. It's a lot tougher to do so across the vast geography that is the United States.

The stakes are too high, however, to NOT solve this accelerating need for true broadband. ArsTechnica has a good article on House Democrats and discussions about 'true' broadband. I'm not even going to get into the lobbying and politics of broadband, telephony and wireless, but suffice to say there are alot of complexities on why we're NOT the world's leader. What most discussions don't focus on, however, is that broadband is viewed as a driver of gross domestic product (GDP) output and we need to be accelerating the Internet -- both in speed and penetration -- now.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs? Read on for a very interesting set of data...

Heat, Power and Web 2.0

This summer has been a scorcher across the world. Here in Minnesota it's been in the 90's consistently and the drought is horrendous. I haven't seen it this bad in my lifetime. In fact, the Earth's temperature for the first six months of the year was the second-warmest ever recorded.

Yesterday's power outage in San Francisco -- which knocked out several high profile Web 2.0 sites as well as this blog for hours since it brought down Six Apart, Typepad's owner -- may be indicative of what we should brace ourselves for going forward.

How are these two related?

There is an increasing demand for power at the same time global weather patterns are changing. In the same way that the desert Southwest of the United States and other oppressively hot regions in the world have been settled in no small way due to air conditioning, the demands on our crumbling power grid (via GigaOM) are increasing. Burgeoning information technology services, an acceleration in building with air conditioning to cool our sweltering bodies (though that has slowed recently), are all rising concurrently with a global growth in population which alone will drive demand for power.

My bride and I are enamored with Scottsdale and have been seriously considering a second home there. We're second-guessing that decision when I analyze water issues there, consider those issues within the context of global warming, and continue to scratch my head over how a growing desert Southwest can possibly support an exploding population with water (this article at CNet about sums up what I've experienced and am thinking through).

Is Microsoft still playing games and accelerating toward irrelevance?

My level of trust in Microsoft has always been incredibly low. From the crushing of Netscape to the "hidden" API's to the games they've played to make any competitor's software run poorly and ending with the lack of support for Web standards, I've never been at all interested in anything they do.

With Ray Ozzie coming on board and seeming moves to embrace an increasingly fragmented and disparate developer ecosystem -- and an accelerating amount of choice with Web applications (and huge competition from Google) -- I thought they'd learned their lesson. Maybe they have....maybe they haven't. I don't spend much brain energy thinking about them but I continue to simply have poor experiences with virtually every use of a Microsoft product or service.

As I'm scanning my RSS feeds (Note: in Google Reader), I just saw this post on Engadget about an apparent stumble on the Today show where Meredith Viera was unable to figure out how to take a call from Matt Lauer on the iPhone. Engadget mentioned, "We couldn't get the video to play on a Mac, but we'll keep an eye out for a YouTube version, let us know if you see anything." I thought, "Nah....can't be" and went there to try for myself on my MacBook Pro.

As you can see from the graphic, to view the video you need to "install free software" including "Firefox 1.5 (I'm on 2.0.0.4) and to "Download Macromedia Flash Player" (I'm using Flash Player 9).  Why don't they just say, "Hello Loser. Why don't you join the dwindling majority of the rest of the planet who are still using Internet Explorer 6 and our operating system?"

Let's suppose that the iPhone is, in fact, wildly successful and the best user experiences are with Web hosted sites and applications that work on this phone. Let's further suppose that Linux iPhone clones proliferate (several already exist in some form like these)? Will Microsoft support them? Don't count on it.

There are so many areas that Microsoft is increasingly irrelevant...like video. I understand that they're beside themselves or the ubiquity of the Flash platform and that virtually every video (and video streaming) site uses Flash technology. According to this article, YouTube's market share is greater than the next 64 video sharing sites combined and Microsoft isn't a factor anywhere within this space. So, should Microsoft create and deliver an offense that focuses on the best, most ubiquitously delivered video platform in the history of mankind or play defense by throwing up obstacles and barriers? IMHO, the former is today's recipe for success and the latter an accelerant toward irrelevance.

NOTE: I just re-read the error screen and tried it in Safari 3 beta and it worked. The kicker? I don't use Safari since WYSIWYG editor toolbars (like I use in Typepad to do a post) didn't work in Safari though do somewhat in Safari 3 beta.

Get Smart about Helping Others Understand Technology

Was poking around Brightcove's site this morning and found a Time/Life channel with the clip below. I remember this show, Get Smart, and its bumbling spy Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams). It was campy as hell but was fun to watch nevertheless.

This clip -- complete with a pinkish red wrapper and an ad for the series on DVD (Note: for some reason I noticed today, July 12th, that it had been taken down so I put up a new version) -- was still one I wanted to include in this post today. Why? Because the way Maxwell is using all his phone gadgets is how I sometimes think people see me when I'm goofin' with all my gadgets and technology. This might be an enjoyable clip that may also make you stop and think about what those of us deeply embedded in Web 2.0, the Internet, software and gadgets present with our use of technology. Let's help the rest of 'em catch up, heh?

Steve & Bill: A perfect time for *you* to reflect...

Early this morning I watched the video of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at AllThingsD conference. So many people have written about this event -- and many were hoping it would be a cage match between Bill and Steve -- that I'm going to add a perspective and place this event into a different context.

In January of 2005, I reminisced a bit about being in Hawaii in November of 1983 when Steve intro'ed the Macintosh to the company (I was with Apple's manufacturer's representative group in Minnesota at the time).

When I work on technology innovation with senior strategists in organizations through strategy and ideation work, it's important to appreciate the revolutionary and evolutionary aspects of human creation without solely focusing on the past. But having a perspective on what it was like and where we are now can inform where we're headed and help set expectations on how fast the future we invent will be adopted.

Listening to these guys talk about 128kb's of memory in the first Macintosh with an operating system taking ~20kb's of RAM is hilarious to me as I sit in front of a laptop with 3GB's of memory that can run Mac, Windows and Linux OS'es; an 120GB hard drive (floppies at the time held 400kb which is less than half of one jpeg image from my digital camera!); and recipes were the killer app for personal computers while I now can do press layout and video editing while casually looking up almost any piece of data I need instantly with bits flying through the air to my wireless card. Add to that webcams, digital video and still cameras, software for blogging, social connections and even virtual spaces, searchable worldwide information and knowledge sets (e.g., Wikipedia) being delivered and the changes are incredible...and accelerating.

But there is SO MUCH change underway that the less than 30 years worth of changes in personal computing Steve and Bill have experienced will happen in years instead of decades and we're already in a time of change that is thrilling and scary as hell at the same time.

Scaling Web 2.0: The Dirty Little Secret Exposed?

Was very pleased to see Tim O'Reilly bringing forth the issue of Web 2.0 scaling and Ray Ozzie's perspective. This is such a vitally important issue and it needs analysis, facts and discussion and big time thought leading exposure.

I first wrote about the "dirty little secret" of Web 2.0 back in December of 2005. That secret is that infrastructure, bandwidth and minimizing latency is a huge issue for startups and is one little discussed.  It's one I know first hand from a conferencing startup I worked with last year -- and informing developers is an imperative since this dirty little secret will impact rich, internet applications; mashups; widgets; and other composite applications delivered going forward.

This problem becomes more acute as we all pull data from geographically disbursed hosted online services. I can't tell you how many times I've waited...and waited...and waited....for some data to appear in a widget, an ad served from DoubleClick, or a startpage pulling simple RSS text data from dozens of different sources. Imagine when several, dozens or numerous interdependent sources (ones that pull data from other services to deliver a composite web service that is, in turn, consumed by yet another new application!). It's a recipe for disaster unless managed at a world-class level.

Now that more of us are playing with video, Flash and, especially, streaming video (e.g., uStream and like what I did at a low level yesterday with Skype video), the challenges in betting a business, a workshop series, a product category or composite applications means that we all better get more informed about this issue and damn fast.

I've said before that one key to the dotcom crash was HUGE amounts of content and functionality being shoved into the top of the funnel while those of us consuming it were drinking from the tiny end of the funnel through 56kbps straws.

I fear that unless this dirty little secret is handled and done so by disseminating understanding amongst ALL creators, developers, business strategists and users of Web/Enterprise 2.0 products and services, users expectations are going to be dashed and it will create material barriers to adoption and use. Maybe not another crash, but the barriers and obstacles that will come are preventable with enhanced understanding and knowledge dissemination.

When will Internet Explorer 6 die?

Oh how I wish Internet Explorer 6 would die. Maybe Microsoft putting a gun to the head of WindowsXP and pulling the trigger will do it. According to Net Applications Market Share stats for the quarter ended March, 2007, IE 6 still commands a 48% browser share.

Why do I long for its demise? Let's take this blog for instance. I've horsed around with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to get the blog container to have the white space in the body and the overall look-n-feel I want. I also extended the width of it past the 900 pixels typically found in Typepad's CSS to 1,000 pixels. The header image you see above fits within that 1,000 pixel space perfectly and looks great on Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Opera...but if you're viewing this blog on IE6 you'll see that there is a single pixel line of white space on the right side of the header graphic that sticks out like a sore thumb. There's probably a workaround, but it's an ancient (in Internet terms) IE6 problem that I'm unwilling to expend much effort to correct.

When I created Rise of the Participation Culture as a Web and PDF-based report, our Web tools generated PNG images that, unfortunately, IE6 can't render!  We had to export each image separately as a JPG as well as request that my template producer create a JPG version of the template itself. What a pain in the butt.

Most people can turn on their computer and do a few things but downloading Firefox or even IE7 apparently isn't in their skill sets (those links, by the way, take you right to the download sites for those browsers in case you're reading this in IE6 and want to join the 52% of the computing world that's up-to-date). This newbie nature is one reason that -- even though propellerheads like me can get all goosey and enthusiastic about the latest-n-greatest technology -- the average person could either care less or needs a lot of handholding to get and stay current.

Of course, this mass, functional technical illiteracy is one reason why our friends at Best Buy bought the Geek Squad and why it's unlikely there will be significant push to sell the Macintosh's they allegedly are rolling out to 200 stores. To do so would cut off the easy money the Geek Squad gets from a complex Windows operating system that newbies struggle with daily (and people that support their family would have with experiences like I did with my Dad).

Phew! That sounds like a huge rant and comes across really negative and dismissive of those in need of the kind of help I provide. It's not intended to be such and I didn't even get into all the security problems that still exist with IE6. I understand how hard this stuff is for people just wanting to do their job -- instead of fool with the tool -- and I empathize.

When I walk into companies or my local school district I realize that there are good reasons why upgrading -- which costs money in hardware, software or the time to perform the upgrading -- isn't done routinely or what some of us think is even a modestly fast timetable. But upgrading a browser is such a drop-dead-simple thing to do (and it's FREE) that pointing out to people why they should do so seems straightforward.

Microsoft Surprises: Controlling the Process

At the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005, a relatively new to Microsoft Ray Ozzie was fully engaged (spoke twice) and I had the pleasure to be seated in the back of the room near him and we bantered back-n-forth (as I mentioned in this post) a few times.

This past Web 2.0 Summit in November of 2006 saw, in my opinion, a significantly different Ray Ozzie. Rather than being the seemingly humble, I'm-one-of-you stance and conversational tone, he was positioning, spinning and coming across as though he'd been fully assimilated in the Microsoft way.

That said, it's tough to walk in his shoes. I don't know the man nor have I spent quality time in conversation with him. I'm not playing the game at his level nor am I someone who has to try to be THE guy that carries the essence and spirit of Bill Gates forward. Imagine doing that OR being the guy that takes over when Steve Jobs retires. Big shoes to fill.

This interview gives a glimpse into the gargantuan responsibility that he faces. The questions are: Will Ozzie change Microsoft...or will Microsoft change him? Since Ozzie didn't even show up for Etech and seems to be in stealth mode, is he crafting some surprises?

I have little inside information though a good friend of mine is heading up one of their new, emerging categories. He is beyond busy so we have only cursory conversations and connections so everything in this post are my own observations and musings.

Here's what I'm beginning to realize: Ozzie will be driving a series of Microsoft surprises that leverage Internet-as-a-platform AND PROCESSES in new and fundamental ways. Here are some of the signs I'm seeing to bring me to that realization:

EFF Pioneer Awards

Last night I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer Awards. Just simply being at this event and absorbing the vibe was meaningful for me and I'll bring forth a perspective that may be atypical and worth putting into the conversation about EFF.

Nearly four years ago was the first time that I donated to EFF and began my support of this organization. Though I look like "a suit", a Republican and a mainstream sort of guy, I'm an independent, a closet liberal, enjoy some Libertarian leanings and am quite open to growing in my perspective as I learn -- especially legally and politically -- as we all push against the membrane of the future.

Five or so years ago I became more enlightened. I was stunned by the multiple, parallel, onrush of efforts by copyright holders, Congress, world intellectual capital bodies, governments globally as well as intelligence communities, to command, control and infiltrate all aspects of the Internet.  As I started to try getting my head wrapped around even a few of the issues, I realized that there was NO way that I could be competently informed about even ONE of these issues shaping our future....let alone dozens of them at a time!

Enter the EFF. I learned that here was an organization whose mission was to be that competent, informed entity who'd act to intervene, stop or shape the debate about the most important issues facing us in our digital future. With more and more of our relationships, commerce, free speech, entertainment -- you name it -- being created or delivered digitally, I (and you) could either pull the covers over our collective heads or get involved...and support those who've rolled up their sleeves, dug their hands in the muck and are in the fray.

So that's what I did.  Last night was great for a lot of reasons and validated (in spades) the vital importance of this organization and the people who've dedicated money, support and all or part of their lives to the mission.

Mobile Global Grid: When the World is At Your Fingertips

Like me, if you're paying any attention to the signs, trends and foundational elements upon which innovation in technology occurs, then you have to be seeing what I'm seeing...it's sooo close.  Do you see it?

Right there. Don't see it yet? OK then, let's push against the membrane of the future together for a minute.

If you look now you can just make out a mobile device, connected to a ubiquitous wireless network (that you can use even when you're miles from a major metro area, off the autobahn or Interstate highway system, or at some point in the future on the Serengeti plain in Africa) and is so simple to use that you're able to connect and re-connect to the global grid in an instant and have all the world's knowledge at your fingertips.

When you're in your car, at a restaurant, a dinner party, at a business meeting, at school...anything connected to the global grid you're authorized or able to grab is yours for the snagging from a device in your hand.

We're partially there now and more is coming.

Unless you've been living under a rock, Apple's eagerly anticipated iPhone is the closest concept yet to a just beyond the membrane of the future simple to use, multi-function device that will be useful for the masses to leverage our currently decent wireless network...and is one set to expand dramatically.

According to GigaOM today, there are distinct chunks of spectrum that hold the promise of mass geographical coverage and expanding the grid. An increasing number of mobile communications online applications are proliferating (e.g., this list at eConsultant). The World Wide Web Consortium's Mobile Initiative adds even more fuel to the fire of a mobile, global grid.

Couple that with the always-on, always-connected, culture of participation (see "Rise of the Participation Culture") and you have a brew from which all sorts of possibilities come forth!

Though I look like some geek when I do this, at least twice a week I'll be in a conversation and someone will say something like, "You know...that ocean...the one by (country here)....what's that called?"  I'll whip out my Treo, go to Google, enter a search string and, I swear to God, almost instantly I can find a reference to that country and there's an obvious link that contains the data where I can answer that question. It's a bit of a conversation stifler at the moment as I futz with the device, but I'm pretty good at glossing over my thumbing on the Treo, we carry on the conversation, and I circle back to the fact and insert it into our discussion. Works great.

Did this at a dinner party one evening awhile back when people were struggling with an artist and a song. No one knew, the conversation continued, and about two minutes later I mentioned the artist. "OH YEAH!" came the head-slap comments and we carried on. Trivial in the scheme of life I realize, but extend this to the DOZENS OF TIMES PER DAY that I look something up on Google, use Google Maps, find a phone number on Directory Assistance, send SMS messages, send a photo/blog post to one of my private client blogs, use Instant Messaging....all from applications that run on my Treo!

So how is this going to transform the world? In ways predictable but mostly ones that are not. Who knows what will be the killer application for the always connected world -- especially when better geotracking is in the mix?  What I do know is that some of it is already here...and if you push just hard enough on the membrane of the future you'll have a good indication of what's coming.

1966 vs. 2006

My sisters laughed when my 11 year old son came into the midst of a family gathering last fall and told a joke, abused me verbally, and then recited a TV commercial verbatim. Aghast and yet amused as he ran away, I asked them, "Was I like that?" They instantly both burst out laughing and said, "Yeah! He's *exactly* like you were. He's your "mini-me"! (Referring of course to Dr. Evil's tiny clone in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me).

I love this kid. He and I have been on six Dad & Son Adventures to Lake Superior in Duluth, Arizona, Rapid City, SD and more. We share so many interests that it's easy to be with him and find common ground. He's more of a technoweenie than I am and is bound for greatness (spoken like a true, humble Dad heh?).

In the photo I'm in the blue shirt at 11 years old. Because of a discussion with my son today about why I'm struggling to get his NintendoDS on our Wifi network (I use WPA encryption and the DS only supports the less secure and previously cracked WEP) made me think about 1966 vs. 2006 and all that's changed.

• Me: Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books. He: Harry Potter; Lord Loss; Interstellar Pig; Dan Millman and dozens and dozens more (man...does this kid read!)
• Me: B&W television and comic books. He: Computers that are Wifi enabled; Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo; occasional cell phone use; DVD and TiVo
• Me: driving trips to northern Minnesota and Yellowstone. He: Dozens of trips including Hawaii, Peru, New York, Arizona, California.

The list goes on. What amazes me is the sheer volume of stimulation his brain has received by 11 vs. what I received at his age. Though he's in the 99th percentile for IQ (must've come from Mom) and he makes sure he's intellectually stimulated all the time, I nonetheless marvel at what a profound worldview this kid has now vs. the limited one I enjoyed at that age.

It's not just him. His friends are the same way and it's almost frightening sometimes to listen to them talk about virtual worlds, game theory (though they don't know it's a theoretical discipline!) and where to find stuff on the 'net. My daughter is simply comfortable with all technology and uses it as a tool. She could care less about gadgets and how stuff works and instead focuses on progressive issues and her friends -- and expects the tools will work and be there when she needs them. Each of my kids are gearing up to make different yet equal impacts on the world and will simply understand when enabling tools debut and how they will benefit their interests.

My opinion about the acceleration in knowledge brought about by our interconnectedness due to the ubiquity of the global internet hasn't changed: it's exponentially accelerating and we're building upon one another's work and knowledge at an increasing rate. Will we make the right decisions about genetic, drug and other therapies? How about computer enhancements that require a biological link? I see that my own children are cognitively prepared right now to face the challenges they'll face the rest of this century...and it helps me sleep soundly.

Single Sign-on, Identity Management & Trust

Thank God for tabs and password management in Firefox. Open right now in my browser are several services I use daily: my Vonage dashboard, Gmail, Typepad, Newsgator, Newsvine, Feedburner, Blue Host (my web site host), Pandora and a few others (and don't even get me started on the 15 or so newspapers and magazines that require their "free" registration!). Each require credentials (username and password) in order to use these web services and Firefox can store them for me so I don't have to remember these and dozens of other combinations.

Password management has become a running joke.

My solution to managing personal credentials is my own unique password generation scheme...but most people that I know use the same username and password across all the web sites they use (including their bank, brokerage, eBay, etc.). This is a huge problem since discovery of one combination would provide a black hat hacker with the key (or at least an idea about how you set 'em up) to a wide range of sites as well as the user's privacy.

We desperately need a better way...especially as web applications continue to explode and more of our computing life is online.

Single sign-on has been the business mandate (and Holy Grail) of the Information Technology organizations in companies for several years...especially as browser-based web applications have exploded within organizations. Having one sign-on for you and I to then have access to all consumable web sites, web applications and services would be great, wouldn't it?

There's a problem. Who *are* you and I?

Identity management is a critical key component of enabling single sign-on and access to many online offerings -- and determining who the person is actually using them. The Liberty Alliance is a promising, cooperative industry group trying to tackle this issue head-on. One aspect of the Trusted Computing initiative is to minimize fraudulent use of a computerized system or device, but facilitating identity management is fraught with peril (someone steals your laptop, knows your credentials, and can easily spoof systems telling them that it's you).

The last part of the problem I'm seeing is one that not many people are talking about: it is one of simple trust (or the lack thereof). From NSA performing domestic surveillance and a history of it in the Federal government to security expert Steve Gibson's report that there is a "back door" Microsoft put in to Windows for who-knows-what reason (though Microsoft denied it just like they did back in 1999), it makes a guy wonder if the government or even a cross-industry alliance could be trusted?

If the Web is to truly live up to the potential we all know it could (online voting, more commerce, human relationships) then single sign-on, identity management and especially trust need to be figured out.

iLife and iWork Initial Impression

UPDATE 01/14/06: added link to 1:30 screencast of iLife crashing. 

Followed blog updates during Steve Jobs keynote yesterday and headed to Apple's web site and read up on the new software and hardware. Impressed with Apple's typical prowess at streamlining workflow with applications that are gorgeous and work great, I popped on over to the Apple Store this afternoon and picked up two family packs of the new iLife and iWork '06 for $200 plus tax.

For the first time, I'm not pleased with what Apple has delivered.

Connecting the Dots podcast for January 10, 2006

Perspective on the Microsoft, Google and Yahoo CES announcements; Apple's announcement today; and a brief discussion about what I'm seeing with innovation and how that ties in to my great, great Grandfather's store: Borsch's Cheap * Cash * Store.

Download or listen to this week's podcast

Web 2.0 Infrastructure: No longer a "dirty little secret"

One primary cause of the dotcom crash was caused by a tsunami of content and offerings that -- at the time -- were being consumed by thirsty consumers who were sipping it through a straw (i.e., a modem) and couldn't possibly access all that good stuff. Forgetting the infrastructure lessons of the crash (or just not talking about them) is the dirty little secret of Web 2.0.

My last day at Web 2.0 in San Francisco, I wrote a post called, "Web 2.0 Conference: The Dirty Little Secret" about the surprising lack of discussion about the scaling that would be demanded of startups offering web hosted applications. This scaling is not just more servers and data center bandwidth...but scaling that includes dealing with latency over the internet.

Just read both Jeremy Wright and Om Malik's posts about this exact issue.

Wright says, "Maybe I’m just spoiled, having worked in high performance, high availability apps before, but it constantly astounds me what some folk consider “scaleable” and “available” applications." Having just lived through the Typepad scalability hiccup (and I must admit being very impressed by how they handled it), this is just one example of a high profile "Web 2.0" company that just experienced the lack of infrastructure and its negative effect on their users.

Malik says, "However, the lack of planning for scale is a clear sign that we are living in a “built to flip” age. No one, is thinking (or planning) about long term business models!"

It's not just servers and bandwidth that are required for scale. It's dealing with latency over an increasingly fragmented and geographically disbursed base of people consuming web applications. As I mentioned in the post linked to above, "This (latency) is a technical problem. Imagine you have a portal that is "consuming" web services from a bunch of different sites. You've undoubtedly experienced ONE web service in the past (DoubleClick ads) where the web page "hung" (didn't parse) waiting for the DoubleClick service to deliver the ad. Now imagine that your blog or web page is grabbing photos, catalog items, maybe audio or video, blogrolls, calendars ALL from different web services, and you end up with one incredibly horrible user experience!"

There's a reason, for example, why Akamai exists and why they offer *both* tagged media files *and* transaction/session management: it's all geared toward a balanced, relatively equal experience for users wherever they reside on the planet.

I use Typepad, Newsgator, Gmail, Audioblog, and a plethora of other hosted offerings. I must admit spending a lot of time waiting for the data to travel the client-to-server-to-client round trip.

Marc Canter and JD Lasica hosted a panel discussion about Open Infrastructure at Web 2.0. While mostly focused on open formats, personal ownership of attention and other metadata (and ownership of data you can move from service to service at will), little time was spent on bandwidth and internet infrastructure (disclaimer: I've been involved peripherally advising JD on proposals surrounding open infrastructure and leveraging current for-profit company offerings).

I fear that the server in the basement to start and we'll add racks 'o servers later mentality will guarantee that the user experience with Web 2.0 applications will start off enjoyable and quickly turn in to a negative experience...and potentially kill the acceleration of this next phase of the Web.

Holographic storage to the rescue in 2006?

I've been chasing backup storage for years. It seems as the moment my backup capacity is larger than my hard drive size -- like when 80-100MB drives were the standard and I had a 100MB Zip disk -- hard drive standard sizes grew. Today, I've got two 250GB hard drives in my tower and one 250GB external Maxtor so I can never fully backup both drives.

What I end up doing is backing up to DVD-R at about 4GB's or so at a time. Crucial files are backed up and I figure I can always reinstall applications. Still, I'd love to simply have greater backup capacity than my hard disks on my main machine and be able to back up *everything* besides all my videos, photos and files on to DVD-R.

Holographic storage to the rescue in 2006?

In an article in New Scientist magazine, 300GB DVD's are within months of shipping:

A computer disc about the size of a DVD that can hold 60 times more data is set to go on sale in 2006. The disc stores information through the interference of light – a technique known as holographic memory.

The discs, developed by InPhase Technologies, based in Colorado, US, hold 300 gigabytes of data and can be used to read and write data 10 times faster than a normal DVD. The company, along with Japanese partner Hitachi Maxell announced earlier in November that they would start selling the discs and compatible drives from the end of 2006.

There is an older article (from 2000) on PhysicsWeb -- or this one on HowStuffWorks -- that's worth a read if you're interested in more technical background of holographic storage.

Now whether DVD-R's with that capacity -- and affordable recorders for our personal computers -- ship in 2006 remains to be seen. But it sure seems like we're close to massive removable storage media that may finally outpace internal, affordable hard disk storage.

Apple's Achille's Heel...

No question that games have been Apple's Achille's heel. In fact, one of the key reasons I purchased an HP laptop was for games (my 11 year old son begged me). Of course, there are a host of little utility things that only a PC can do since the manufacturer <insert name here> doesn't support the Mac for some miscellaneous dweebezaarb application.

What if the upcoming Mac on Intel took care of that?

When announcing this past Summer that going forward Apple would be primarily supporting the Intel chipsets -- and that developer's needed to create "universal binaries" with Rosetta (powered by Transitive) so they'd run on both the current PowerPC chips as well as the future Intel ones -- I became quite interested in the emulation possibilities.

Games are, however, far too demanding to run well in emulation. Every ounce of performance is necessary to provide a good user experience. An experience which is, in fact, growing ever more powerful and rich with the advent of new gaming systems like the Playstation 3 and XBox 360.

Still, there is a lot of interest and debate about what Apple will do in this PowerPC to Intel transition. What if there was a minimal, base-case load of Windows (or an emulator) so that games and other applications would operate natively on Intel? Could Apple provide a near-equal gaming experience with Windows games yet have Mac OS X be the dominant operating system? It's intriguing to think that -- with this transition -- Apple would instantly and immediately remove the one key problem users have in switching to Apple: games.

High tech....always an adventure.

iPod, iTunes and what Apple knows about YOU

Had a *very* lively email discussion today with the smart folks in the Podcast Minnesota group after I started the thread about a new service that debuted (Fruitcast). It is just too good to leave inside an email threaded discussion -- and did it *ever* get me to thinking and connecting the dots about my iPod, iTunes, podcasts and what Apple knows about me.

Fruitcast has launched before Adam Curry's Podshow has fully rolled out. Fruitcasts' value proposition is to offer a way for podcasters to potentially monetize podcasts through advertising. There was a lot of discussion in the PodcastMN group and great points like:

• CR: it'll be interesting to see what happens with podshow.  because having advertising in their shows will select for a different type of audience.  and i suspect there will be some backlash about it. because honestly, the whole motivation for podcasting was to find content out there that didn't completely emulate the model of traditional radio in every way.

• Mike W: I don't know why everyone is in such a rush to "monetize" their podcast. I still am mildly offended that every somewhat popular blog has ads plastered all over them.

• Mike W: While I am going to watch this with a watchful eye, I don't ever want to lose control over what I do. If I advertise anything, it will be first and formost something I believe in and use.

• Mike O: There's no way to know who's listening -- so what advertiser in their right mind would pay that kind of money to listen to me ranting off into the void?

• Michael K: pointed out that there's no way to know how many of those downloads are actually being listened to.  What advertiser would want to fire their messages off to non-played files on people's disk drives?

None of this might matter in the long run. Podcasters might not even have a voice since Apple could -- given enough data about each-and-every podcast listener -- simply personalize the iTunes music store based on each subscriber's listening criteria and forget about trying to insert ads in to podcasts at all or get permission from a podcaster to do so. If you're a listener and are in to rock-n-roll, then there are a handful of podcasts that ought to be front-n-center on the podcast page for you. If you're a technoweenie, there are tons of tech shows like This Week in Tech, Podtech, ITConversations, etc. that could be too. Ads could be delivered to "channels" of podcasts on the podcast page and money offered to those podcasters that care to participate in an ad insertion model.

I predict Apple will be in the best position to monetize advertising since iTunes is the defacto gateway to digital music and podcasts (yeah, yeah...that's open to argument but it's surely the largest gateway).

So what does Apple know about you from your iPod and use of iTunes?  Is it Apple -- and not Podshow, Fruitcast, Odeo, Google or Yahoo -- that will know the most about you and the podcasts to which you listen -- and be the most powerful advertising powerhouse surrounding podcasting?

Free Rein to Control the Internet

That sound you hear is the door-of-innovation being closed by the wireline telephone company executives as they institute control over what you can and cannot do on the internet -- and those gleeful grins on their faces are courtesy of our Federal government and the free rein they've been give to exhibit this behavior. Free Skype phone calls over the internet is poised to kill their businesses and they will not allow that to happen. Those other sounds you hear are the collective moans from wireless telephony executives that have realized citywide wireless technologies like WiMax will allow free Skype calls (and data transfer) in the urban areas where they enjoy the lion's share of their profits.

Joining this anally retentive and controlling crowd are the cable companies, the movie industry and the media conglomerates that are seeing major portions of their respective businesses threatened by the possiblities that a free and unfettered internet allows. These groups will not allow that to happen and are also being enabled by our Federal government to do whatever they please to protect their businesses.

The control? Block successful offerings like Skype through port blocking. Cripple the use of technologies like Bluetooth in mobile phones so you can force your cell phone customers to pay twice (once for voice and again for data access -- even though any technologically savvy person *knows* they're getting screwed). Pressure Congress to extend copyright and institute ridiculous laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act so they don't have to compete in the free market.

The mainstream media has *finally* awakened and are writing about what's going on. Today's Wall Street Journal had a front page story about telcos and cable companies that are blocking certain applications which subscribers use on their networks, ostensibly to preserve the quality of the network. Video file-sharing is the primary scapegoat since it consumes a lot of bandwidth but VOIP providers like Skype were discussed at length. Draconian laws and control measures shoring up downtrending industries (telco's, publishing and media) have created an accelerating climate of control which has twisted Adam Smith's invisible hand so it's down the front of our trousers squeezing our family jewels. Luckily we're finally to the point that the average person is also feeling the pain.

Though it is obvious to even a casual observer that the Bush Administration has demonstrated zero leadership in balancing the internet-as-platform-for-innovation and instead is cowtowing to US business interests and internal protectionism (while the rest of the world blows by us with their innovation), it's not too late to stop the choking off of innovation here at home.

Where are our leaders and what are they doing besides command-and-control and instituting regulation and protectionism? I could've sworn that it was the Democrat's that were slammed for more and more governmental regulation and the Republicans who were supportive of the free market.

iTunes 5 breaks my iPod....or does it?

Having used the Macintosh since 1984 (and the Lisa before that) as well as more PC's than I'd care to count, I pride myself on being a power user and someone friends and family turn to when they run in to a roadblock with their personal confuser (to use Leo Laporte's term from the TV show "Call for Help"). It turns out *I* was a bonehead vs. having it be Apple's problem.

I've been merrily using the iPod and having zero issues so was quite chagrined when I downloaded the new iTunes 5.0 and began having issues. Issues I couldn't fix.

I'm on the message boards reading about other Mac users (there was an acknowledged Windows version of iTunes 5 problem) and many were having exactly the same problem as I was experiencing (when I'd plug in my iPod, I'd get an error that it couldn't copy to that disk). Stopped at the Apple store and a "genius" was able to copy tons of music to my iPod (should've been my first clue) and I guessed it was my operating system, one or more of my music files or something. Upon getting home, I ran the iPod updater, trashed preferences files, rebuilt this-n-that, ran Onyx (GUI for unix commands that clean up stuff) to clean up my system, rebuilt my entire iTunes library for over an hour, and none of this works.

So tonight I'm sitting here trying to fix it. I think, "Hmmm....could it be the Firewire cable?". I plug in my iPod with the Apple supplied extra USB cable. It works. I let out a moan like a wounded bear.

Makes me think about all the people posting on Apple's and other sites I visit. How many others' problems could be a simple fix? Or is this stuff way too complicated? Even smart guys like Russell Beattie get frustrated (he's threatening to be a "reverse switcher" going from Mac to Windows) which is more about the level of complexity in information systems than it is the lack of knowledge or capability of the user.

CTD for August 28, 2005

This week's podcast is a brief discussion about Mac OS X vs. Windows vs. Linux from one person's perspective.

Frustration started with an attempt to install Linspire (a Linux distro) but it hung...creating a cascade of events with effort to rescue data from a hard drive that got corrupted, necessitating a re-install of Windows. Knoppix is discussed briefly which is a bootable CD distribution of Linux and -- going forward -- the only way Borsch will use Linux!

Also, the segment "The Radar Screen" follows with a brief recap of the items that hit Borsch's radar screen this past week.

Download MP3 of this week's show

A battle for control over wireless broadband innovation

You probably have a WiFi connection at home for wireless internet access. You may have heard about WiMAX (and the European version called "Hiperman") which you can think of as city-wide (or a theoretical 31 mile radius) large scale wireless internet access. What you probably haven't heard of is a new technology offering called "xMax" which appears to be magic.

Oh....if it were only so easy to simply get excited about ubiquitous (and either free or low cost) internet access without a governmental, micromanagement tug-of-war occurring first:

• Congressman Pete Sessions (who also happens to be a former telecom executive) has introduced a bill, H.R. 2726 (PDF here), that would prevent cities from establishing their own Wi-Fi networks. The intent is to prohibit municipal governments from offering telecommunications, information, or cable services except to remedy market failures by private enterprise to provide such services.

• In opposition, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) have  introduced legislation that specifically permits municipalities to offer low-cost broadband service and have made it a part of their previously announced Community Broadband Act of 2005. Their intent? To amend the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to preserve and protect the ability of local governments to provide broadband capability and services.

Still...being in a tug-of-war is precisely what they're there for and my respect and admiration for Senator McCain grows all the time. He "gets" that the job of government is to be a catalyst to incubate innovation vs. protecting special interests and tying up innovators with regulation.