Citywide WiFi Needed in the Twin Cities, As Is Symmetrical DSL

I grabbed lunch with Leif Utne earlier this week. As you might expect, it was a pretty intense conversation on podcasting, technology, politics, and the overlap.

First order of business, I’m down with Minneapolis going with a private company to run citywide WiFi network for the two reasons cited in the Strib article:

  1. Startup Costs
    The faster the city is covered in a wifi cloud, the better. There are issues with that position, and this is one of them. Right now, the city doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to launch a network like this tomorrow. I wish it did. Any number of private companies do. Probably even a few local ones could pull it off. Either way, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and all the suburbs on the Met council need citywide wifi. Now. None of them can support it in-house yet. I don’t know how going with a private company prevents continual study into public ownership. Any funds spent on getting to public ownership should be considered research. Plus, only my water bill goes to the city. My other utilities; gas, electric, internet, phone – all companies (private or otherwise). Is that best? Not sure it matters.
  2. Legal Issues

    “Telephone and cable TV companies might sue the city on the grounds that a Minneapolis public network was using tax dollars to improperly compete with them.”

    FUD, I know, but it’s a good point. High speed WiFi (> 2Mbps) competes with every other communications method; telephone, radio, television. Aside from being inevitable, this is a very good thing. Plus, this is an opportunity for telephone and cable TV companies to offer valuable, unique services rather than collecting rent. Oh yea, both the non-profit HourCar.org and the for-profit ZipCar.com are in town. Choices are good things.

    Additionally, I think cable TV companies would be huge supporters of citywide wifi. It should get them off the hook for continual support of public access. (Citizen have their own “channels” on the internet).

All of this leads to the need for symmetrical (same upload speeds as download) service for everyday people. Why? Simple, the growth in media production isn’t from big media companies. It’s from you. The family photos, audio, and video you’re sharing with family and friends. Everyone a producer.

Imagine a telephone where conversations with your mom had a lag, but from a telemarketer was fine. Imagine a CD player that distorted the music you created, but played Top 40 artists just fine. Where is the line drawn on who gets quality service? When is famous, famous enough?

We live in this world today, and will until ISPs stop artificially bottlenecking transfer rates.

Doc Searles has been posting on Net Neutrality and symmetrical broadband for a while now. It’s taken me a little bit wrap my head around it. I wonder if the handicapping of businesses caused by asymmetrical service could be considered a violation of the Commerce clause.

Either way, this is the same issue I describe in TiVo’s Future is in Videoblogs post. Reminding me, TiVo needs to run BitTorrent and allow subscribers to upload video. Without that, yes, they are toast.

Amazing Race Season 9 – Episode 1

Two-hour kick off to Season 9. Premieres are tough, lots of people to meet right away, 11 teams, 22 people. Nobody jumped out at us during the introductions. They all talked smack in the same way, “Everyone else will underestimate us, and we’ll beat them.” Blah. Once is bravado – 11 times is scripted insipidity.

Destinations without any task associated with them feel pointless. Feels more like an ad, in this case, for the Unique Hotel in San Paulo than a valuable, useful piece of the race.

Detour: Motor Head or Rotor Head
The ‘rotor head’ task sounds really time consuming. True to the race, this one will give you a better flavor of place. Rebuilding a motorcycle from the frame won’t teach you about San Paulo – but it sounds faster. Based on the editing, it wasn’t.

Religious ceremonies in some nondescript Brazilian warehouse? Hmmm. Maybe that’s what we can turn our big boxes into when retailers are done with them – churches for snake worshippers.

Garrick’s Favorites

  • BJ & Tyler – #2
  • Dave & Lori – #4
  • Ray & Yolanda – #7

Feels good to be blogging about the Amazing Race again.

Tuesday Ten Pack – My First Favorites from SXSW 2006

After a week with the 650+ tracks in the first 2006 SXSW Showcasing Artist Bittorrent, here’s the first 10 tracks capturing my attention.

Some New RSS Feed Features

I just added a few, hopefully, useful links (comments, trackback, email, digg) to the RSS feed of Garrick Van Buren .com and my other blogs.

If you’re running WordPress and want to do the same (something like Feedburner’s FeedFlare), here’s the code I’m using:

< ?php comments_popup_link(__('0 Comments'), __('1 Comment'), __('% Comments')); ?> | < a href="" rel="trackback">Trackback< /a> |
< a href="mailto:?Subject=[]%20< ?php str_replace(" ", "%20", the_title_rss()); ?>&Body=< ?php str_replace(" ", "%20", the_author()); ?>%20said%20something%20interesting%20at%20%20< ?php permalink_single_rss() ?>">Email This< /a> | < a href="http://www.digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=< ?php permalink_single_rss() ?>">Digg It< /a>

Be sure to remove the "" to unescape the tags. I put it right after the < ?php the_content() ?> tag.

Cabina Italian Kitchen – Culver’s With Gnocchi

While the house was being shown tonight, Jen and I tried out Cabina’s Italian Kitchen in the ever maturing Silver Lake Village.

I’m not sure why, I always assume Italian places are going to be Maggiano’s and pricier. Tonight, I was more in the mood for Chipotle than than sit-down Italian.

Cabina’s is closer to Culver’s than Maggiano’s. Both in proximity and in concept – there’s a Culver’s 2 blocks away. Like Culver’s, you order and pay up-front and they bring the food to your table. Like Maggiano’s they have fresh-tasting gnocchi (not in Vodka sauce – blah). The baked penne was bland. As was the cheese bread appetizer. The staff was friendly and anxious to help.

Unfortunately, their helpfulness made their role unclear; they bring food, they clear dishes, do I also order from them?

Bye Rex, Thanks for the Party


(Matt Thompson from the Strib and me in a MNstories video documenting the party.)

I, along with 600 of Rex Sorgatz‘s closest friends wished him well in his move to Seattle and Microsoft last night.

Honestly, I haven’t been to a blow out like that in quite a while. The food, the drink, the hundreds of hipsters in a very tight space.

Among them, I was able to catch up with Ben, Chuck and Lori, Paul, and a bunch of people I haven’t seen in years that are still without blogs. As an added bonus, I finally met – in person – the legendary Adam Sellke and the elusive Dack.

Thanks Rex – for the party and for MNSpeak community (of course more over there). Enjoy your travels west, and oh, and say ‘Hi’ to Scoble for me.

iSticky – Sending Stickies Around the Internet

I’ve been using the Macintosh Stickies to keep track of things for years. It’s been my standby note taking application for 3 main reasons:

  1. free with the OS
  2. just start typing
  3. no need to explicitly ‘Save’
  4. works without internet access

I thought it’d be neat if Stickies could be shared. The folks behind iSticky thought so too. I’m playing around with it today and looking to test out the iStickyServer sharing bit. If you’d like to as well, I’m ‘garrick’.

So far, my favorite bit about the application is the zen-like sample/intro notes:

“We hope you’ll enjoy our network service in a peaceful way!”

“It’s very important to check your preferences, because there are many features to discover.”

When I’d Pay For WiFi

There’s a showing at the house this morning.

Between waking up, tidying up, responding to the morning email, I wasn’t able to grab a decent breakfast (or brunch as I prefer). I already had a cup of coffee, just needed a network, someplace reasonably quiet, and some food.

Too many places with free wifi don’t have decent food, are loud, and generally don’t fit the bill. Driving around looking for a destination, I thought, “here’s an opportunity to sell me wifi and a quite room.”

I’ll bring my own coffee and pick up a sandwich someplace along the way, and I’ll give you $10/hr for a quiet room and a fast network.

Oh, I ended up at the Wilde Roast Cafe and had their bean quesadilla. Pretty tasty.