The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved specific grant requirements today for the regional broadband consortia program established last year by Senate Bill 1040. The grants are funded through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). Qualifying regional consortia can apply for up to $150,000 in funding for each of three years ($450,000 total). Applications are due on 23 August 2011. The decision authorizing regional consortia grants, establishing eligibility and setting out application requirements and procedures is available here, along with supporting CPUC documents.
Tellus Venture Associates has just completed a market study looking at the City of Palo Alto’s high speed fiber backbone service and can be downloaded here. The report will be presented tonight to the City’s Utilities Advisory Commission. The presentation will be also be available for download afterwards, and a more complete case study will be posted soon.
Judging from Intel’s press conference, their new Sandy Bridge platform – from now on known as the 2nd Generation Intel Core Processor Family – is focused on media and entertainment performance, driven by deep integration between hardware, operating systems, applications, content and networking.
Mooly Eden shows his fast chips, funny hat and cute accentThe headline features are the on-board graphic and media processing capabilities, the 32 nanometer architecture delivering 1.16 billion transistors on a chip and integrated, studio-satisfying content security functionality.… More
So far, the only close-to-really-new announcements have come from ASUS. That might be because the 2011 CES story is about incremental improvement and minor innovations, not radically new products or services. Or it could be a question of chipsets.
Everyone is hinting or outright pimping upcoming tablet computer announcements, but not actually saying what it is. That’s a little unusual for press days at CES, but it could be because Intel has what it thinks is a huge announcement to make in a few minutes, and they’ve turned the screws on their customers with the idea of managing some kind of coordinated roll out.… More
Jonney rocks it like SteveAll he needed was the black turtleneck. OK, Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field would have helped too.
ASUS chairman Jonney Shih borrowed the Apple chairman’s presentation style, falling only a little short on the mojo. Shih introduced four different implementations of the new eee Pad family of touchscreen tablets.
First up was the Eee Pad MeMo, a 7-inch tablet device that looks a lot like a big iPod Touch and runs Android on a Snapdragon processor.… More
Long-odds prediction for the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show: the mobile phone will be the set top box. Expect a prototype that tethers a large screen display to a media-rich smart phone. You walk in the room and your stuff appears on the screen. You will only have one channel and it will be whatever you want to watch, where ever you happen to be.
If someone doesn’t roll it out here in Las Vegas this week, you’ll see it shortly from Apple (which is too hip to hang at CES these days) or at a mobile phone event in someplace like Barcelona or Orlando or San Diego, at the latest.… More
I came in while John Chen, CEO of Sybase was speaking. He talked about how wireless is enabling mobile banking, commerce and philanthropy. Interesting stuff. But the best part was when he set the stage (perhaps unwitting, perhaps not) for the second speaker, Dr. Kristina Johnson, an undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Energy. Chen starting talking about various federal agencies, FCC, FTC etc., and called them the F-words.
When Johnson came up on stage, she didn’t exactly return the compliment, but she didn’t have much to say about wireless telecommunications or the mobile phone industry either.… More
F-Secure doing anti-virus, background app monitoring software for mob phones, downloads & runs just like anti-v for computers #showstoppers
F-Secure supports Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian now, sez iPhone and RIM in process #showstoppers #ctia
The Borg are invading the Enterprise (market), DeviceAnywhere selling racks to imprison phones & software to torture them #showstoppers
DeviceAnywhere hosts 2,000 phones & sells remote access to developers for testing, lashes them into racks like Borg mothership #showstoppers
Now IT depts can build mobile phone daughter ships using DeviceAnywhere racks & test enterprise apps on many phones at once #showstoppers
aisle411 wants to provide shelf by shelf, row by row info on where to find products in big box stores #showstoppers
aisle411 sez they can get 90% accuracy by asking shoppers to update product locations voluntarily, 99% if stores give the info #showstoppers
Pull out your iPhone in HomeDepot & ask for drill bits, scan bar code & get reviews, but won’t do price comparison #showstoppers
Guys might like aisle411 if it cuts shopping time & need to ask directions, not everyone wants to diminish shopping tho #showstoppers
aisle411 will find niche when RFID tagging is ubiquitous in, but conflicted biz model needs happy stores, not happy customers #showstoppers
Seven Networks makes contact, calendar, platform for carriers and OEMs, providing a free MobileMe clone for Samsung #showstoppers
No more guy directions on GPS nav units, Navteq testing “natural guidance” like go through second light & turn at yellow house #showstoppers
Navteq sez it’s directions like friends would give you, OK, but it depends on which friends #showstoppers
OK, Windows via iPad, but please wash
your hands afterwardsKineticD offering free remote access apps for Windoze and Macs, access on iPad & iPhone via RDP & VNC #showstoppers
Remote access suites are free, KineticD uses it to promote paid secure cloud storage, good apps, good marketing, good karma #showstoppers
Still, it’s unnatural to watch someone operate a Windoze machine on an iPad #kineticd #showstoppers
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them #showstoppers
Starttalking does Android app that lets you address & write txt messages via voice, with no hands or eyes #showstoppers
StartTalking SMS app is free, will have premium app that does email, Twitter, Facebook, will support iPhone, RIM next year #showstoppers
Millennial Media is an old idea for new media, sells remnant ad inventory from mobile publishers to major brand advertisers #showstoppers
Damaka does mobile video conferencing between 4 users on peer to peer basis – want to stream a live concert to your friends?… More
BTOP might have $442 million in the kitty, although almost certainly not. Or $257 million or $15 million or zilch. For BIP, I can’t even estimate what’s left, but my best guess is that money is already gone.
First, I want to give credit where credit is due. Fred Dyste, via his Digital West blog, has been the gold standard for tracking BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program) and BIP (Broadband Initiatives Program) stimulus grant applications and awards.… More
Capital expense, operating expense and revenue are the basic parameters of a business plan. With broadband-specific incentives that improve those metrics – even marginally – local governments and economic development agencies can attract private broadband investment into underserved areas.
Public policies can be tailored to significantly reduce construction costs. Uniform, broadband-friendly right of way and permit procedures eliminate a huge source of uncertainty for business planners. The more certain they are of their estimates, the more likely they are to invest.… More
