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In their paper Homes with Tails (PDF), Columbia Law School professor and NAF Fellow Tim Wu and Google Policy Analyst Derek Slater lay out a proposal in which a community would establish a collectively-owned fiber trunk cable that would lead to individually-owned lines into people’s homes.

The authors submitted their proposal was not the answer to improving broadband access in the U.S., but one of many possible solutions.

Moreover, they said, their plan is not intended to be widespread but for places where it could easily be established, such as in newly-built communities with homeowner associations. It should be for the few who could make the most out of such great capacity.

The option to own fiber should be available, the authors argued, since it is unlikely that the private sector will invest in widespread fiber deployment, and there are too many unanswered questions as to how the government might fund such a venture.

Such an architecture would be “akin to a condominium complex–also a radical form of property not too long ago,” Slater said.

“What could the hobbyists, the Steve Wozniaks and Steve Jobses of today, do with 10 gigabytes?” asked Wu. “We’re talking about giant leaps forward.”

A representative for Verizon challenged the notion that telecommunication companies are not investing enough to drive innovation. The industry spends $65 billion annually to maintain and upgrade its networks, said Link Hoewing, Verizon’s assistant vice president of Internet and technology issues.

“It is true $2,000 is a lot of money, but people spend tens of thousands of dollars on home renovations all the time,” Wu said.

“Solving this problem is so important that we need as much experimentation and investigation to come up with many solutions as possible,” Slater said.

Cost would be a clear obstacle for any consumer as well, he acknowledged.

The authors said that while there is no reason why privately owned fiber cannot work, it will require some experimentation and research.

(Credit:
Stephanie Condon/CNET News)

More at issue is compelling people who have access to broadband to actually use it, Hoewing said. Consumers often say they do not need to pay for it because they have access to high-speed Internet at work.

“Other nations are becoming the laboratories for democracy,” he said. “This is really about policy innovation to drive technological innovation.”

Columbia Law professor Tim Wu explained Friday the benefits of encouraging privately owned fiber lines.

Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said that the plan was commendable for putting forward new policy innovation, which is lacking in the United States.

The United States through its history has been the world’s leading innovator thanks to a few hobbyists tinkering in their garages. If the U.S. wants to maintain its dominance in the world market, some argue, its policies should encourage innovation through broadband deployment.

The fiber would lead an open point of presence (or PoP), at which different service providers could set up equipment and compete for residents’ business.

“It costs billions and billions of dollars, and it’s not clear what the killer app would be that would justify the investment,” Wu said.

While Congress has taken steps to promote universal broadband, a new working paper from the New America Foundation suggests a peculiar route to fostering the nation’s next great innovators: allowing consumers to purchase and own their own fiber-optic connection.

I gave Calaboration a spin this morning, and after restarting iCal, it worked without problems. With the current implementation you’re able to see other people’s schedules, as well as reply yes, no, or maybe to calendar invitations. The only problems I ran into early on were syncing errors where iCal would not let me write data to Google’s servers, which was remedied with a closing and reopening of the program after the initial CalDAV setup.

Calaboration lets you pick which Google Calendars you want to sync up with iCal. The same thing can be done in Mozilla's Sunbird or any other calendaring tool with CalDAV support.

You can grab Calaboration here. If you’re a Sunbird user, there’s a simple provider extension that does the same thing.

Google on Monday formally announced full support for the CalDAV protocol along with the release of a small piece of software for
Mac computers that lets users easily link up their Google Calendars with the iCal application.

Google had previously launched CalDAV support back in late July, however, consumers had to manually add their calendars directly to CalDAV-supporting applications like Mozilla Sunbird and Apple’s iCal. The new Mac utility, named “Calaboration” simply lets users plug in their Google Calendar username and password to send Google calendars over to iCal. The benefit of doing this is the two-way sync. This means whatever changes you make on either end will be synced up to both every few minutes.

(Credit:
Google)

I liked this company when I first met its founders, Ron Schneidermann and Evan Reece, in 2006 because I saw it adding clever and modern Web methodologies to a traditional business. The company has done acceptably well since its founding. I feared, though, that the recession would kill this concept. Who’s spending money on skiing in 2009, after all?

And, finally, after the slog of winning over about 85 small to midsize resorts as customers, the A-list resorts are biting. “You can’t keep charging a flat rate in a down economy,” Schneidermann says, explaining the shift in his customer base.

The Liftopia team found it easier to get contracts with smaller resorts. These contracts don’t generate huge revenues for either the company or the resorts themselves, but slowly, resort by resort–in a form of business battle more akin to trench warfare than the air war the founders had planned on–Liftopia has been making progress.

Except that the big, successful resorts didn’t want anything to do with the start-up. As Schneidermann tells it, the ski industry is filled with fly-by-night lift ticket resellers run by amateurs looking for free passes for themselves. To a resort like Kirkwood, Liftopia looked like one of these upstarts and not worth the trouble.

In 2005, two mid-level employees from Hotwire started Liftopia, a business to help ski resorts sell more lift tickets. Taking what they knew about yield management in the travel industry, they figured that resorts would jump at the chance to move more people onto their lifts, especially on slow days.

Liftopia has also scaled back its technology vision. The company is capable of automatically generating lift ticket prices based on moment-to-moment sales figures and historical data. It initially pitched these algorithms to the resorts. But for the resort owners, this was too much tech; they just wanted a way to offer reasonably-priced tickets to get a few more skiers onto the lifts. Now, Liftopia pushes the ease with which it can manually update prices, rather than its automated-pricing engine. The small ski resort owners that Liftopia has as customers, Schneidermann says, are not in general run by aggressively tech-forward wonks looking to actively squeeze every penny out of their resources. They just want to make a few bucks and stay afloat.

But as it turns out, the recession has been a gift to the small company. Yes, people are spending less on leisure. But when they do, they’re staying closer to home and looking for value. What Liftopia delivers is right for these times: it matches people who want to ski for cheap (and not travel far to do so) with ski resorts desperate to bring people to their sites on what would otherwise be slow business days.

In January, Schneidermann says, Liftopia sold more tickets than it did in the entire previous season.

Still, Schneidermann says, since “resorts don’t have budgets to push promos or software in place to react effectively to drops in demand,” he does feel that Liftopia has a lot to offer–especially since right now “people are deal-hunting.”

The road to Kirkwood

The path to success for this company has not been the one the founders planned on. The founders originally plotted their customer acquisition strategy this way: get the big resorts first and then watch the rest of the industry fall into line. They wanted to be the go-to shop for value-priced lift tickets, and they thought that starting at the top was the way to go.

(Credit:
screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

So Twitter for such companies might merely become a one-way communication mechanism that can be used to disseminate news releases, blog posts, and such. That’s still fine, but it largely duplicates what can be done by subscribing to a company’s RSS feeds, and it’s not as exciting as the more social aspects of Twitter.

Google’s Twitter account attracted 27,176 followers in the less than two full days since its launch Wednesday. That’s nearly one every 5 seconds.

However, as Twitter rises in popularity, I’m not convinced this conversational aspect of corporate Twitter use will be sustainable for large companies. I can’t keep up with my own e-mail, and people have a lot more to say to a company such as Google.

In case you’re new to the Twitter phenomenon (don’t be embarrassed–plenty of people are), the service lets people post public or private thoughts in text-message-friendly packages of 140 characters or less. You can follow other people’s Twitter feeds, and they can follow yours. There’s no shortage of what-I-had-for-breakfast tweets, but there also are plenty of meatier missives.

There’s still debate about whether Twitter is a mainstream phenomenon, but Google’s instant popularity on it should dispel any doubts the microblogging service has become an essential tool in tech-savvy circles.

For now, Twitter conversations often take the form of a public back-and-forth of tweets addressed by appending “@” to the username, for example @stshank. That makes tools such as Twhirl or TweetDeck important since Twitter’s Web interface won’t flag tweets that mention your username.

Google's first tweet

Tech companies and others have discovered Twitter as a way to communicate with fans and foes and to discover and address customer concerns. The increasingly important Twitter search can give companies some insight into what people are saying in the moment.

I like it when companies identify who’s doing the tweeting in the bio section of their Twitter page, at least in some vague way. “A Googler” is somewhat disconcerting.

Google’s first tweet was characteristically nerdy. “I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010.” Translated, first from binary to decimal ASCII codes to letters: “I’m feeling lucky.”

Google hasn’t attained the Twitter follower popularity of Barack Obama, with 333,381 as of Friday morning, but it is a remarkably fast ascent. Microsoft’s Live Search Twitter account has 1,536 followers, and Yahoo’s Twitter account has 4,876. Yahoo climbed aboard the Twitter bandwagon two and a half weeks ago.

I’m a Twitter user (I’m at stshank) and like it. But one thing raises my hackles about all this corporate use: who are the faceless people representing these companies? Is it a single person, a collective, a bot, or what? A customer service rep, PR people, the CEO, or a programmer? It feels strange having a public conversation with an entity that’s both personal and impersonal.

(Credit:
CBS Interactive)

Looks great, but how does it sound?

Of course, if you want a smartphone with a touch screen, and you insist on using Verizon, you’re probably going to buy one of these. In fact, you probably already have. But if you’re a music fan, don’t count on replacing your MP3 player with this particular phone.

In particular, the mechanics of the touch screen–you have to press areas on the screen with some force, as if they’re actually keys–have been greeted with almost universal frustration.

The reviews are in on the Storm, the new touch-screen phone from Research In Motion, and nobody loves it. Check out takes from CNET, Engadget, Gizmodo, and Time for a sample.

But for a would-be
iPhone killer, the reviews are remarkably light on the Storm’s music features. It’s true that BlackBerry users are traditionally e-mail junkies, and the phone’s communications features (apart from the touchscreen weirdness) are expectedly top-notch. But if this is going to be a consumer phone–Verizon’s attempt to make up for its epic fail in passing up first rights to the iPhone–music is critical. A big part of the appeal of the iPhone is that you don’t have to carry around a separate cell phone and MP3 player anymore.

Apparently, though, the Storm isn’t much of an improvement over the nontouch BlackBerry Bold, which was announced in the summer and came out a couple weeks ago. The Storm’s got an 8GB microSD card, as opposed to the Bold’s 1GB, but otherwise, it uses the same media management program from Roxio (known for creating functional but not particularly user-pleasing software) and the same ability to sync your iTunes library, and that’s about it. There’s no on-board music store, although this Time review says a deal with Rhapsody is imminent. (No V Cast? That’s no big loss.) And the BlackBerry app store isn’t set to launch until March–the current iteration has only eight apps–which means you won’t have any great musical add-ons like Shazam, Bloom, Finetune, OurStage, or JamBase.

But it’s undeniable that the company has seen an impressive trajectory over the past year: a steady stream of press releases have announced $85 million in venture funding, acquisitions, international expansion, and executives plucked from Google.

The debut advertiser for Glam Black Life is automaker Lexus, and a number of sites that cater to African American women have signed on as network members, among them Afrobella, YBF, and The Blay Report.

Called Glam Black Life, the new content area joins existing channels like fashion, beauty, entertainment, family, and the most recent addition, “wellness.” Like the others, Glam Black Life serves ads on blogs that have been accepted into the network, and see their content featured on the Glam.com homepage and e-mail newsletter. And like other Glam niches, Black Life is headed by executives with backgrounds in traditional media: director Tamera Reynolds, a former executive at Honey magazine, and ad sales chief Asten Morgan Jr., a former sales executive at television network BET.

Glam remains a topic of contentious discussion in tech and advertising circles. It’s partially a reaction to colorful and ambitious founding CEO Samir Arora, partially due to executives’ insistence that they aren’t running an “advertising” company, and partially because there still isn’t full industry confidence in its business model–a professed old-media approach to content on the Web.

Glam Media, the female-oriented advertising and blog resource firm that has stirred both conversation and controversy in Silicon Valley and Madison Avenue, plans to announce on Thursday a “channel” for blogs geared toward African American audiences.

Brooks cited surveys that show 89 percent satisfaction among Vista users. However, I must say, he also quoted a statistic that 78 percent of people liked the Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates spots.

The software maker is counting on the massive ad push to help improve Windows’ image. The campaign is expected to last beyond this year and spending has been estimated at around $300 million.

The print portion of Microsoft's new ad campaign characterizes the Mac vs. PC debate as an epic struggle between "Windows vs. Walls".

As for whether it got the value of the reported $10 million it spent to hire Seinfeld, Brooks had several things to say.

Microsoft's new ads begin with company employee Sean Siller saying "I'm a PC and I've been made into a stereotype."

The purpose, Microsoft says, is to show that Windows is part of a common language uniting people around the globe.

Bill Gates does make a cameo, saying “I’m a PC and I wear glasses.” The ads will debut later Thursday on NBC’s The Office.

Brooks said to expect the “I’m a PC” notion to run for some time, being joined by a Web push that will go live at Windows.com tonight and invite users to tell their own “I’m a PC” story, some of which will be made into online advertisement.

“So far the story that has been told about Windows over the past couple years has been very negative,” Brooks said. “It’s just not true.”

Despite some reports to the contrary, Brooks insists the plan was always to shift away from the Seinfeld-centered ads. He said that the company did not film any other spots with Seinfeld.

“Hey that’s fair feedback,” Brooks said. “We’ll work from that.”

Another facet of the campaign tries to play up the notion that Windows works across multiple devices, from desktop PC, to laptop, to phone.

“We’re definitely not afraid of the truth,” he said. “The problem is it just hasn’t been told.”

In an interview, Microsoft VP Brad Brooks said Thursday that the new ads are aimed at making sure the story of real Microsoft employees and customers get told.

After two weeks of running a series of ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates that left many people scratching their heads, Microsoft’s latest spots take direct aim at the Apple ads that have turned Windows into a punch line.

Microsoft will also run print ads focusing on the notion of “Windows without Walls” and “Windows: Life without walls”–notions that Microsoft expects to use for years to come. A series of print and outdoor ads shows a single image split across multiple desktop, laptop and Windows Mobile phones, aiming to show Windows as an experience that spans many devices.

(Credit:
Microsoft) Updated 8:40 a.m., PDT with additional details throughout.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

The spot then goes on to have other people say that, they too are PCs, including an Obama blogger, a McCain broadcaster, actress Eva Longoria, a school teacher, and a fish salesman, among others. (My favorite is a guy standing near cows saying “I turn No. 2 into energy.”)

“I’m a PC and I’ve been made into a stereotype,” says Microsoft employee Sean Siller, who looks a whole lot like John Hodgman, the actor who plays the PC in Apple’s ads.

(Credit:
Microsoft)

“We spent nowhere near $10 million for Jerry,” Brooks said. “We’ve got options with Jerry and we consider Jerry to be a very good friend of Windows and Microsoft. Right now, we are entering a new phase, but it’s not to say we might not bring back (Seinfeld). We’ve got our options open with Jerry.”

That is consistent with what Brooks told me in an initial conversation a couple weeks ago, though I must say the shift in conversation seems quite abrupt with little connection between the first ads and the new pitch.

That’s a substantial increase from the 11 percent slice of the global market that 3G held at the end of last year, the report noted.

Global wireless subscriptions for 3G and 4G networks are expected to account for 30 percent of the market within the next five years, according to a report released Wednesday by In-Stat.

“Based on contract awards, WiMax deployments are remaining resilient in the face of the economic slowdown, although some operators are slowing the deployment rate,” Daryl Schoolar, an In-Stat analyst, said in a statement.

4G technology Long Term Evolution (LTE) is expected to give WiMax stiff competition in the 4G market, but, for now, In-Stat notes WiMax has a head start and may hold its own.

The increase is expected to come by 2013, as wireless carriers upgrade their cellular networks to 4G from 3G, and network equipment makers roll out their commercial 4G products toward the end of the year.

He added that WiMax may find itself an attractive alternative in developing countries, where fixed broadband networks have not yet been established.

As such, Google doesn’t need to win you or me over to Chrome. Its focus is on Web application developers. Once it has those folks optimizing their applications for Chrome, you and I will follow because Chrome will deliver the best experience for working on the Web, rather than simply browsing it.

Cause for alarm? Of course not. Google never intended Chrome to be a one-day-wonder, and I doubt the company is worried about Chrome’s market share today. The battle will be won over years, and it will be fought at the developer level against Silverlight and Flash, rather than at the browser level with
Firefox and Internet Explorer, and perhaps particularly within the enterprise.

Google Chrome has now settled into a holding pattern around 0.7 percent browser market share.

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As new market-share data from Net Applications shows, Google’s Chrome got off to a roaring start, and has been coming down to earth lately. In its first few days after release, Google Chrome went as high as 1.16 percent market share, but it started dropping after the euphoria of the announcement died down.