Chicago Sun-Times files for bankruptcy

Along with Charter Communications’ filing yesterday, this is the second of the big media companies to run for cover from their creditors in two days.  Neither was unexpected, but both show the changes that are taking place in the communications industry.  In Charter’s case there is some small hope that the reorganization (with the approval and willingness of the creditors) will result in a revived company with positive cash flow.  In the Sun-Times’ case there is no such hope.  What will be interesting is the knock-on effect for other, small communications companies – whether they are network providers or newspapers.  In either case, it doesn’t matter: if you don’t have a modern approach to building revenue streams you can’t survive.

Chicago Sun-Times files for bankruptcy - The CNN Wire - CNN.com Blogs

Encarta to be Discontinued

No doubt I am one of the few who will be disappointed in this announcement. I’ve been a user/purchaser of Encarta since it first appeared in the marketplace. While it’s hard to ignore the dominance of Wikipedia, Encarta had some features that made it a positively lovable application. I especially liked the interactive globe and the Encyclopedia based quizzes that tested your knowledge of both trivia and slightly more important things. However, as Microsoft itself admits, there are new ways for people to consume (and provide!) this information. So Encarta goes the way of GM (wait! not yet!).

It’s an unusual product announcement for Microsoft: a really good product that had a really good reputation – but whose time has passed. Microsoft has done the right thing, but Encarta will still be missed by some of us.

Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued - MSN Encarta

Virgin eyes 150Mb broadband speed

What are you supposed to do with 150Mbytes?  Remembering that a user’s apparent Internet access speed is dependent on the speed with which information can be delivered, I can’t imagine how a 150Mbyte pipeline to the home would get filled.  Video and gaming you say?  Well, having the AT&T U-Verse access service for about a month convinces me that 20Mb is probably all that’s needed for a combination of Internet, VoIP and television.  I’m not subscribed to HDTV channels, but if I were would the bandwidth requirement double?  Doubtful. 

So, how in the world would you fill a 150Mb broadband pipe?

BBC NEWS | Technology | Virgin eyes 150Mb broadband speed

Apple Discontinues Bluetooth Headset

There are lots of products that Apple makes that should be (must be!) laughed at. But the iPhone Bluetooth headset was one of the few that I owned before I realized that it was intended as a joke. Too late! I had purchased it anyway! Now we find out that Apple has discontinued the headset. A few years too late for me; but now what am I to do with this tiny, black, overpriced piece of junk? Oh? That trash can? Okay . . .

On My iPhone (2) - Speedtest

A long time ago, on a distant blog in a far away galaxy, I blogged about Internet speed meters.  One of the ones I liked the best – and still do – is located at Speedtest.  Well . . . perhaps it was only a matter of time before they released an iPhone version of the Speedtest speed-o-meter!

Here’s what it looks like and it works as advertised. 

I especially like the version for the desktop/laptop and I’m glad that they have taken the time to implement a test for the iPhone.  That makes for some interesting comparisons and measurements.  I’ll post a couple of comparisons later: one of the most interesting is comparing a laptop with an iPhone on the same subnet.  The iPhone appears to be much slower.

Purdue and Post-Party

It’s the day after our annual party and the day that Gaelen returns to Purdue after a week for Spring Break. Time to reflect and record a few things while on the five hours to West Lafayette, Indiana.

I’ve started to think that the quality of a party is judged, not by how much fun the people who attended had, but instead by who did and didn’t show up. My thinking comes from conversations I’ve had after our Annual Spring Party: “weren’t you surprised that so-and-so came” and “it’s odd that so-and-so didn’t make it.” For example, our immediate neighbors have decided not to engage in neighborhood activities and a party is included. That’s interesting to me because the idea of “separateness” isn’t really part of the ethos of our neighborhood. The person in the next office from mine also didn’t attend. I got some confirmed "I will attend" from a variety of people who didn't show up. I know it isn't unusual -- just sets me thinking about the people who have the conversation "should we go or should we stay. . ." the evening of the party. If they answer "stay" then your party is disposable in some respects.

Neither of the alderpersons I invited could make it, but they get a pass because of how busy they are. I was thrilled to see Rich and Lori Hamann after many years – proof positive that the Facebook connection is not just for people in their twenties. Most of the success of the party – Heidi thinks there may have been 90 people there at one time, is built around getting the neighbors to attend. eVite proved to be unsuccessful for most of the people in their 50’s for a variety of reasons – for a combination of technical and social reasons.

The trip to Purdue started around 9:50am this morning – usually a five hour affair, even with minimal stops. Gaelen has the captain’s chair for the drive down so that i can blog a bit and make some notes. It’s March 22nd and it’s a cloudless Spring morning. In Madison there’s no snow on the ground anymore but the lakes are still covered by a thin glaze of ice. There’s open water right at the shore so soon the ice will begin to melt and we can think about throwing the pontoon into the water. The grass is still dormant in both Madison and all the way to the state line giving the landscape a brown. lifeless look. With no leaves or buds on the trees yet, southern Wisconsin has a pretty barren look to it. Purdue isn't that far south, but seems to be in a different world: the grass is green, the trees are in bud and folks are outside in shorts. The only people outside in shorts in Madison are people you wouldn't want to be with anyway.

Gaelen had a good week off but worries that his co-op program opportunity will not come through. It’s been a few weeks since his last interview and there have been no calls or further contact. He’s already thinking about alternate employment for the summer – too bad, because the co-op program is part of what makes Purdue special.

24 Books a Year (4) – Mrs Affleck

Mrs Affleck (amazon), a play by Samuel Adamson, is an adaption of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf.  The main adaptation is to take the already dark and spooky play and move it to the 1950’s where the sexual repression, guilt and oppression can be emphasized even more.  I can’t imagine that theater goers at London’s Cottesloe Theater are exactly singing the tunes as they emerge from the evening’s experience.

The experience is primarily this: Rita Afflect has been waiting for six weeks for her writer-husband to return from the hills of Scotland.  Presumably cramped by writer’s block, he has escaped to nature to re-start a book.  While waiting the beautiful and rich Mrs Affleck shares her days with a half-sister-in-law and a child with some extensive special needs.

But when Mr Affleck returns he hasn’t written a word.  Instead of the intense and sensual reunion she planned, Mrs Affleck is in for something completely different.  Mr Affleck’s return brings with it a revelation that is the entire engine of the second act of the play.  The whole play deals with guilt, responsibility and the need for committed love in exception circumstances.

There’s more than meets the eye to this story and I’d imagine that a cramped and claustrophobic style would suit this well on stage.  Not having seen it – and knowing that it was played in-th3-round at its premier – affects one’s imagined staging.

Naturally Ibsen’s powerful talk of sexual repression, desire and the consequences when the two are exposed, is a heady mix.  Choosing to set it in the 1950’s is a clever bit of distancing that might allow the unwary to believe that it isn’t a tale for our times.

But it is. Mrs Affleck is about responsibility and caring in the face of exceptional circumstances.  It is a condemnation of self-interested contentment over passionate commitment to others.  And, while this isn’t giving anything away, it is a lesson of the profoundly lonely consequences of not grappling and engaging with those we love.

Highly recommended.

First Thoughts on Hava

Jim Baskin is personally responsible for my buying a Have Platinum HD.  So far, I’m glad I did.

Gaelen helped me set up the place shifter on my basement DVR.  I have AT&T’s U-Verse service and was hoping that I could use it to watch recorded video and current shows on my laptops while travelling.  Set up wasn’t perfect: it turns out that one of the cables in the installation box was defective so that resulting in my having to buy a S-Video cable and an audio cable to replace them.  Once the cables were working we had the box working perfectly for local connections – for instance, to Heidi’s and Gaelen’s laptops.

But that disguised a larger problem: it wasn’t possible to use the machine remotely.  The Hava box tries to connect to a master server (presumably to keep contact with the master server and exchange information about the external facing address for the residential gateway.  On first installation, this simply didn’t work using the Hava setup.  I tried a second time and couldn’t even ping the Hava servers from inside my our residential network.

Gaelen convinced me to call for help (even going so far as putting the phone in my hand).  The technical support person (what time was it in Bangalore??) was friendly but forced me to register prior to doing any technical support at all.  Then after registering he asked me to do a factory reset of the box and start from the beginning.  I hate this approach from technical support – usually.  But in this case the device came to life immediately and was visible from remote networks.  I was impressed with Hava’s technical support.

Gaelen also spent some time experimenting with the Hava box and our downstairs television.  He thinks it is capable of HDTV and that he has things set up so that the Hava box is ready to provide an HDTV stream to the TV.  Unfortunately, I haven’t subscribed to any HD channels on U-Verse, so it’s hard to say if it works.  I’m suspicious, but maybe it will work.

The quality of the video on the local connections has been pretty good – I’m looking forward to seeing what it is like at Purdue or in my Atwood Office.  More about that later.

24 Books a Year: (3) The Queue

The Queue (amazon or borders) by Vladimir Sorokin is a simple tale of Soviet times: an enormous line appears in an unnamed city, people join the end of line without really knowing what it is they are waiting for.  The novel is the story of those people in line.  It’s almost that simple, but with a twist: the entire novel is rendered in the dialog of those who are in line.

It’s the speech patterns – and, being able to distinguish different threads of conversations from each other – that make the book such a delicious satire on Soviet life.  It doesn’t give the story away to tell you that the queue remains in place for days and its participants struggle to find food, child care, something to drink, and the odd carnal entertainment while they wait for a product “so good, I wouldn’t get out of line.”  The story even follows the queue overnight as they wait out in the cold to preserve their place in line.

For the prospective reader it’s important to remember that you have to supply the imagery yourself.  The reader’s imagination is almost as important as the story; that gives The Queue a deceptive train.  It looks like The Queue would be a simple and quick read, but it’s really not so: since you have to fill in many of the narrative and scenic details yourself – based on the dialogue – reading the book is very engaging (in the best sense of that word).

Of course, it wouldn’t be worth it if the story wasn’t good – and that’s where Sororkin delivers.  There is an engine in the story that makes it easy to turn the page; the satire is delicious in parts and laugh-out-loud funny in other places.  And, as a bonus, there’s a bit of a surprise ending for a payoff.

Would only a reader of Russian/Soviet novels or current affairs like this book?  I asked myself that question while reading it.  It may be the case that most American readers would be put off by the format (too much work) and the subject (a line for consumer goods in Soviet times?).  But that’s their loss.  I don’t know if it’s worth standing in line for, but The Queue is definitely recommended reading.

New gTLDs to Confuse and Amuse - III

There's a whole set of geographicly inclined gTLD proposals out there -- the most famous being .berlin

The intriguiging thing about these proposals is the different way they are being pitched to ICANN. Some are being done by private companies and are being supported by the local governmental officials. Others are being done by city/state or region itself. Other still are the product of cooperation between a series of regional entities (for instance, the well-intentioned .asia proposal.

Don't know much about .scot except that there didn't appear to be at ICANN and yet they remain one of the many proposals in this category. One of the criteria for acceptance is the avoidance of string contention or similarity. Which is too bad because .scoot might have been a fun proposal.

Back Home

I really enjoyed Mexico City, but I wish I had more time to explore.  The place is enormous and its colonial history shows on every corner.  Still, there’s an odd contrast between the old and the new in Mexico City.  It’s much more cosmopolitan than I expected and quite vital during the day.

Coming home was an adventure.  My flight left the Mexico City airport at 6:30am so I got up very early just to be prepared and ready.  I got up at 3am and was ready for my pre-arranged taxi by 4am.  It took less than 20 minutes to glide through the empty streets to the airport.  At 4:30 I was in line and ready to get my boarding pass.  I was happy to be a little early because American Airlines was fabulously slow: only two check-in agents for sixty people waiting for boarding passes.  Eventually I got my pass and proceeded to security and immigration.  Security, at 5am in the morning, isn’t a hassle at all, so I got through quickly even though the X-Ray operator was convinced I was carrying two laptops (I wasn’t).  A quick glance at my boarding pass indicated that I should head to gate 27.  I walked to the gate, took out the Kindle 2, and used it to keep me company for the rest of the wait until my flight.

After a while I noticed lots of activity around me but none at my gate.  Just to be sure I checked my boarding card again.  Incredibly, I was assigned seat 27 and not gate 27.  Instead, I was supposed to be at Gate 36 – a ten minute run away from where I was.  When I finally made it to Gate 36 I was eight minutes too late.  My flight had just left.  The gate agent said he had called me several times – I don’t doubt it.  I’ve never done this in all the years I’ve travelled internationally.  The gate agent said I’d have to go back through immigration to the main desk to get a new reservation and a new set of boarding passes.

Once there I was asked about my bags: “You brought them with you, right?”  No, I hadn’t.  “Oh, well.  You will have to go through security and immigration again and retrieve your bags before we can re-check them to Madison.”  After about an hour of self-inflicted frustration, I emerged with a new set of boarding passes.  One for a trip to Dallas.  The other for a trip to Madison.  Unfortunately for me, the connections weren’t so good: six-and-a-half hours in Dallas/Fort Worth’s brand new airport.

And, all because of my Kindle 2.