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What if Apple brought universal wifi to San Francisco

While San Francisco's plan for municipal wifi may have stalled after Earthlink decided to abandon the project amidst corporate restructuring, the city's desire for free city-wide wifi was affirmed on November 6 when 62% of voters voiced their support for the original proposal. It's unclear whether the city will ever get their free wifi, but the city has voiced their desire to be able to log in anytime, anywhere and there do seem to be a few ways for this to still happen even without Earthlink on board.

It sounds silly, but San Francisco is Apple country. … Read more

Verizon opening door to mobile future

Slowly but surely, we're reaching the point where future mobile computers will be able to hook up to the wireless Internet just like a PC.

Verizon Wireless' announcement that it will open its network to outside devices and applications by the end of next year is the latest step in the dismantling of the traditional wireless industry. For years in the U.S., we've been locked to networks, saddled with expensive two-year contracts, and restricted from doing things we'd like to do with the products we buy.

It seems like that is finally starting to change. Verizon'… Read more

Episode 611: Verizon's new horizon

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Google's evil stock price

Google may try hard not to be evil, but it's having a hard time keeping its stock price on the straight and narrow. At the close of trading today, GOOG hit $666/share. No more. No less. I can hear Vincent Price intoning (to the melodious sound of Iron Maiden):

Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (Revelations 13:18)

I guess most companies don't ever have to worry about hitting that number, since very few are … Read more

Report: Google hosted storage coming in a few months

Google's much-rumored online storage service should be available in a few months, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal late on Monday that cites unnamed sources.

The service would allow people to store any kind of data on Google servers and access it from any computer with an Internet connection. An unspecified amount of storage would be offered for free with additional amounts available for a fee, the report said.

Google spokespeople did not return calls seeking comment on the report. A spokeswoman for the search company reached by the newspaper declined to comment on any specific … Read more

Microsoft plans Russian data center

As if the Microsoft vs. Google battle didn't already resemble a game of Risk, the software giant announced plans to move into Irkutsk.

The software maker confirmed Monday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the regional Siberian government, but said that it is too soon to say whether Irkutsk will be the site of a planned data center in Russia.

"Though Microsoft Russia is working on potential data center construction in Russia, we are still far from final site selection," the software maker said in a statement.

Microsoft has been on a building spree … Read more

Failed migration to Google Apps for Sky? Who is at fault?

Slashdot has this note suggesting that the UK Internet Service Provider, Sky, is having trouble migrating its users to Google Apps. Reading through the commentary, however, it seems like the real problem stems from poor user documentation, and not technology, per se:

Rupert Murdoch-owned British ISP Sky is migrating their customers to the Google Apps platform, and the customer experience is terrible. Their 1 million customers were told that they need to change their client settings to enable SMTP Authentication and other settings on a certain date ? but not to do it before then or their e-mail would break; but … Read more

Is Google out of its league in telco?

Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal writes an excellent op-ed piece challenging Google's efforts to take on AT&T and Verizon in the mobile world. Google, of course, wants to open up the mobile Internet so that it can farm it as it does the PC Internet: advertising everywhere.

But as Jenkins notes, Google may be at a technology, political, and infrastructure disadvantage in going up against the telcos:

When they're done [rolling out fiber optic networks], the telcos will have not just the preferred platform for delivering high-def, on-demand and interactive services. They'll have several advantages over their would-be rivals, whether Google or Microsoft or the cable companies. One is their history as phone companies, in the form of systems for billing and tracking individual customers in their usage.… Read more

Is Google stuck in the past?

Why is search so focused on the past when what I really want to search is the present?

I occasionally check in on Google to see what it thinks of me. Or, rather, what it makes of the links that connect back to "Matt Asay." For months I've been wondering why it continues to show old data when I google my name.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it puts my Blogger (owned by Google) blog first, despite the fact that I rarely update it anymore now that I blog at CNET. In fact, it has Blogger and my Blogger profile among the top-ten results, despite the fact that these are hardly the most informative/useful links for me.

It then links (twice in the top ten) to my old InfoWorld blog. I posted a lot of stuff there over the two years I was with InfoWorld, but with nearly 1,000 posts on CNET since July, including links from Valleywag, Slashdot, CIO.com, O'Reilly, etc., you'd think that Google would hit "refresh" and update the results that "Matt Asay" yields.

This would be somewhat academic except that both Yahoo and MSN Live both return results that are much more in keeping with who I am, and what I'm currently up to. Is Google search mired in the past?… Read more