Monthly Archives: March 2005

Werblog: The End of Broadband Service?

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Kevin Werbach muses on a recent anti-consumer broadband FCC decision that will prolong our slow broadband service….

The FCC reached a decision this week that could effectively end broadband service as we know it. The order hasn’t officially come out yet, but the result was leaked.
The FCC granted a petition by BellSouth to pre-empt state regulators from requiring “naked DSL.” The procedural aspects are convoluted, so the effect of that action may not be clear. Here’s what the FCC is saying. The local phone companies (and, although the ruling doesn’t specifically cover them, cable companies) are free to force customers to buy pay for phone service in order to get broadband. Whether or not you use the phone company’s voice service is immaterial — you have to pay for it. Although there are a few telcos willing to sell DSL as a stand-alone service (notably Qwest), one wonders if they will continue to do so.

70% of WI Municipal Clerks Support Photo ID at the Polls

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Wispolitics:

In yet another sign of growing support for common sense election reform, the office of Senator Joe Leibham (R-Sheboygan) today released a poll indicating 70% of Wisconsin municipal clerks surveyed support a photo ID requirement at the polls.
129 clerks responded to the survey, and 90 support photo ID at the polls. When coupled with a recent survey released in February by the Republican Party of Wisconsin (RPW) that shows 84.3% of likely voters support photo ID, the head of RPW said it is time for Governor James E. Doyle to stop ignoring the will of the people and take action in support of this common-sense election reform.

Viral Marketing

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Daniel Terdiman:

Every company we’ve spoken to already has somebody working on this,” said Andy Sernovitz, CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, or WOMMA. “It’s called different things — viral, buzz, customer satisfaction. But in the four months since we started, we’ve got 60 corporate members, and 3,000 people on our mailing list.”

Call it what you like, marketers of all kinds have been increasingly looking for ways to take advantage of the speed at which information moves today and the power that can come from people passing on their impressions, recommendations or referrals of products or services.

This is not something that can be manufactured – though many will try. Rather, it’s only successful when spontaneous and genuine….

Diesel Hybrids on the way

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John Gartner:

Vehicles with diesel engines typically get 25 to 30 percent more miles to the gallon than their gasoline counterparts, according to Charlie Freese, executive engineering director at GM Powertrain. Freese said the many factors that make diesel engines more efficient include operating unthrottled and more efficient oxidizing of fuel. Diesel engines also have a higher compression ratio, and the heavier diesel fuel has a higher energy density, according to Freese

Calatrava’s Milwaukee Art Musuem: Nocturnal Illumination?

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Whitney Gould:

As Calatrava projects go, this one is unusually subdued at night. His buildings and bridges in Spain, many of which I saw on a Calatrava-related odyssey in 2001, are beautifully lighted, sometimes theatrically so. His City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, for example, becomes a charismatic town square at night, with an eyeball-shaped planetarium that gives off a lantern-like glow and a museum whose white ribcage looks even more dramatic than in the daytime. Calatrava himself designed the dramatic lighting for his cabled Alamillo Bridge in Seville (1992), its leaning-harp profile a forerunner of our own (well-lighted) 6th St. Viaduct, designed by Kahler Slater Architects.

Literary Collaboration: The King James Bible

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A Palm Sunday Link: Dan Gillmor notes that David Bollier draws a parallel between today’s internet collaboration & the King James Bible.

We high-tech moderns like to think we have little connection to the past, but as I pondered the new online collaborations, I couldn’t help thinking that we could benefit from considering one of the greatest literary collaborations in history, the King James Bible.