The race is on for a few select cities vying for Google Fiber, the company’s initiative to place high speed broadband access to a few cities in the U.S. According to Google:
"We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We’ll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people."
Some of the cities in the running include Austin, TX; Huntsville, AL; Topeka, KS; Greensboro, NC; Chapel Hill, NC; and Seattle, WA. These cities and towns are going to extremes like changing their name (like Topeka which has temporarily renamed itself "Google, Kansas") and getting their state legislatures to issue proclamations. Facebook pages, such as that for
Huntsville, are springing up faster than Google ads.
Does location matter in the selection? Well, I’ll put in my two cents and give you my opinion:
- Austin, TX - Nah, too big
- Seattle - Come on, with Google’s competitor sitting in Redmond
- Topeka - overreaching by changing their name
- Greensboro - is "Tobacco Road" the ideal place?
- Chapel Hill - Well, they’ve already got the high tech label with RTP, next…
- Huntsville - Yes, my choice by a mile…the home of Virtual Alabama, Cummings Research Park (second only to RTP), and "the Rocket City" ... a much better association for Google than "Tobacco Road"
[oh yes, forgot, I live in Huntsville]
by Joe Francica on 03/15 at 01:13 PM |
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Jim Quanci, director of the Autodesk Developer Network (ADN) penned an article called Dances with Elephants for UpFront.eZine that I thought GIS developers might find valuable. It lays out the three different “levels” of developers that work with Autodesk (and I’d offer, GIS platform offerers): from those building simple utilities, to those building specialized apps to those building high volume apps. Mr. Quanci has been doing this for some time, so he knows of what he speaks.
- UpFront.Ezine
(Shameless Plug: If you do anything related to CAD you’ll want to subscribe to this free weekly CAD newsletter. I’ve been a subscriber since…I can’t remember how long!)
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/15 at 12:44 PM |
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The company, officially, Cell-Loc Location Technologies Inc. of Calgary, was founded in 1995 to break into the E-911 business. It’s now in the wireless fleet tracking business. But, with 2008 funds of just $900,000 from private placements that still need to be paid back, losses for a few year, a deal with Samsung going south, and the company announcing layoffs of six employees, things don’t look good. Without something big happening, it may not be a going concern for long.
- IT World Canada Blog
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/15 at 06:00 AM |
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The Bing Maps team has announced that you can now embed its Twitter Maps app into your site to show selected tweets and/or selected geographies.
Select: Choose either a fixed location (centered on a specific point) or open the experience more broadly (moves the map as the Tweets come in).
Specify: Select the dimensions of your map (height and width).
Add: Enable search filters. These will be carried into the embed form (if you’ve specified them to filter only tweets that meet your search criteria).
Embed: Copy/paste the HTML into your web page.
More and a sample (that you may need to key in a code to prove you are a person????) at Bing blog.
- via Microsoft PR
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/15 at 06:00 AM |
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The Hill blog covers MAPPS’ visit to the capitol last week. Besides making fun of its name, here’s the money quote:
Steve Phipps, director of federal programs for Woolpert, a geospatial company in Ohio, told me that there’s a misconception that Google Maps is sufficient for engineering uses.
“Google maps is really inaccurate,” he said. “You can’t do engineering with that. It’s a cartoon.”
- The Hill via @entchev
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/15 at 06:00 AM |
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