I wasn't sure were to post this because it doesn't really fit neatly onto one or more of our blogs, but I just thought this was such a huge commitment by a world leader, that it couldn't go unmentioned.

Prime Minister Tony Blair has committed a future Labour government to providing broadband access for all during a next term of office. Blair told delegates at the Labour Party conference that if re-elected in the General Election, expected next year, he wants to 'end the digital divide' and ensure broadband is available to every home that wants it by 2008

Unfortunately the article, nor the speech, make reference to exactly HOW he is going to do this.  Do any of you remember the days when politicians promised big things, like landing on the moon?  I guess they finally realized that they need to manage expectations a bit better.

I came across this rather candid interview [courtest SFGate.com] with Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corp. who is set to retire this year.  The interview leaves you with the feeling that Intel believes that the end is near and, as we have seen, they plan to scale the breadth of integrated offerings as the limits of the transistor are in sight.

Q: You wrote an open letter to your employees (in July) regarding your concerns about how things were going at Intel. Are things changing in the ways that you had hoped?

A: We have very high standards for our performance at Intel, for a variety of reasons. The memo was in reference to our performance and (said) that we could improve our performance and we should improve our performance. Since then, we've examined what we're doing internally.

We had all of the groups look at their performance. Every one of the groups has the top five issues they think they can improve on, and they are putting plans in place.

Hopefully, you'll see the results of those efforts with increasing predictability of delivery of products.

Barrett goes on to talk about miniturization of IC's and how Intel and others are currently lviing in teh Nanotech world. despite that fact that some say true Nano Tech is quite far off.  I encourage you to check it out as he has some interesting perspectives on the future of IC developement or the lack thereof.

AT&T wireless is being investigated for price gouging its customers during the recent hurricanes in Florida.  It appears that while not directly at fault, AT&T's network didn't respond as it should have during the storm.

Florida is investigating Redmond-based AT&T Wireless Services over complaints of price-gouging during Hurricane Frances, Attorney General Charlie Crist told CNN. At issue are extra connection fees and higher per-minute charges during Frances that Crist called "unconscionable."

AT&T Wireless' network and those of its roaming partners failed during the storm, and some customers trying to make calls were billed by a third-party service with rates that were "quite high," company spokesman Mark Siegel said.

From TechDirt…

The details suggest that it wasn't so much AT&T Wireless, but, rather the failure of AT&T Wireless' network along with those of some roaming partners, such that the calls went over the networks of some third party providers at somewhat ridiculous price levels. AT&T Wireless claims they'll refund the extra cash on the next bill, but it still looks bad that this happened at all.

AT&T issued a statement upon hearing of the charges.

AT&T Wireless will refund the extra charges on customers' next bills, Siegel said, adding that "nobody should be billed more during a natural disaster, and nothing would be more odious to us than doing that to our customers."

According to Jason Dunn over at PocketPCThoughts.com, Dale Confings web site, PocketPCPassion, a personal favorite of mine for a long time and that has been down for a while now, is deceased.  Well..at least in its current incarnation.  But have no fear because fans of the famed PocketPC MVP will only have but a few weeks to wait for a sequel to return.

"Well, I just got off the phone with Dale, and there is goods news and bad news. The bad news is that all attempts to recover Pocket PC Passion have failed. The good news is that he has the software guys busy putting together "Mobile Passion" a new site or sequel to Passion. It should show up on line in the next 2-3 weeks. It will be much like Passion with the forums linked to the front page. It will cover all things Windows Mobile including, PPCs, Smartphones, Windows Media Players, and whatever else may come along. So although all past history is gone the site will be back which should hopefully see the community build again."

Dave Evans, a.k.a. Paragon, has posted that update in the forums, and I wanted to make it front page so that people would be updated on where Pocket PC Passion is at. This is great news - go get 'em Dale!

I've been giving a lot of thought to all the hype that Skype has been getting as of late.  So much has been said about the great aspects of Skype, of which there are a few, that in the interest of balancing this with a bit of perspective on the downsides, I thought I'd throw a few of my own opinions into the ring for you all to chew on.

Before we can really talk about what Skype is, and why it's good and cool and innovative (oh…wait, it's not really innovative), we need to be clear about what Skype is not.  Skype is not a new concept and Skype is not a replacement for your other phones.  It may be good for calling your other geek friends (I do) and it may be good for calling your possibly tech savvy parents in Florida, but don't try calling grandma or grandpa.

I'm not trying to bash Skype here.  I think it's an interesting and innovative solution in the sense that, well, it's free, but it's not the first of its kind.  Ever heard of Net2Phone or the more or less defunct NetMeeting which also added video conferencing but never got around to allowing you to call peoples land lines?  There are others as well.  Not to mention the recent offering from BT / Yahoo.

MSMobiles.com has the scoop on the updated released (v1.2) of FUSD.RSS.  It doesn't add many new features, only a few, but it does fix quite of few of the broken ones.  Check it out if you're one of the cool/lucky/daring SmartPhone 2003 beta test…errr..owners.

Sometimes I wish Smartphones were cooler and smaller.  I tried one of the first generation Smarphones that I picked up from Expansys about two years ago.  Beside the phone crashing (or needing to be rebooted every 12 hours or so, it was great.  Anyway, I got rid of it and now I'm sorta into my Bluetooth enabled Sony Ericsson Z600.   I love using the BT connection to download mail from my IMAP server and sync my RSS feeds into my IPAQ 4155, but I could be coerced into trying a new SmartPhone 2003.  Any offers? ;)

Alright…maybe the subject wasn't so funny…but don't you remember the muppets intro to "PIGs iiiiinnnnnn SPAAAACCEEEE!!!!!"  ok…so now I'm really showing my age…but I digress.

HP today announced that HP iPAQ Pocket PCs are being used in space by the Expedition 9 astronaut and cosmonaut crew aboard the International Space Station Soyuz 8 space craft. The iPAQ h5550 and accompanying accessories were launched on April 19, exactly four years after the introduction of the first iPAQ Pocket PC.

The iPAQs will be used as mobile productivity tools to record daily crew procedures, write personal memos and check e-mail and calendars. The space crew will also be able to listen to music, view photos from home and read e-books, allowing them to have some of the comforts of home on their journey. The devices will remain aboard the space station and be reconfigured for each new crew. For the next flight, two additional iPAQs are expected to launch to the station for a total of four iPAQs.

I'm not sure if this is a first or not for PDA's…I'm guessing that Astronauts have used handheld computers before, but never a store bought device like the iPAQ h5550.  It's damn cool if you ask me. 

For one it shows that NASA is finally thinking outside the box with cheaper, comoditzed hardware.  Good going NASA.  As a PocketPC fan myself, I salute you. 

The thing that really makes me laugh though is that the 5550 has both embedded bluetooth and WiFi.  So basically you can use iPAQs on the space shuttle, but not on commercial jets (yet).  Don't you just love the irony.

Mike..it looks like this trumps your WarFlying over L.A. Sorry buddy. Good effort though. ;)  Maybe you can arrange a "WAR Flying Plant Earth" trip ;)  If you do…I'd like to come. 

Thanks to PocketPCthoughts.com for the info.

Want to help decide the future of mobile computing solutions including PocketPC handhelds, Smartphones and embedded Windows, at Microsoft? Stop by the MS career site and check out these listings. 

Cool…I wish I lived in Redmond.

While this piece of information from Canalys may stun you EMEA Palm users, it comes as no surprise to those of us who are satisfied PocketPC owners.  PocketPC sales are blowing the doors off of those of Palm devices sold in Europe. 

Microsoft showed stunning growth in the first quarter of 2004 versus 2003 in both voice and data centric devices. PalmOne remained virtually flat in data centric devices and was up 19% in the voice centric category, though their share in voice centric devices is actually dropping going from 1.6% of the market in Q1 2003 to 1.0% in Q1 2004.

Note that all PalmOne figures have been restated to include Handspring numbers. What about the Treo 600 though? "Most of Microsoft's smart phone shipments so far have been tied to the Orange network, but with the MPx200 becoming available on other operators' networks and with more models appearing over the coming months, we would expect shipments to increase substantially. PalmOne's Treo 600 hasn't done as well in EMEA as elsewhere; it needs more models and broader operator coverage to become a contender in the smart phone space."

The one thing that this chart does not point out is that the Symbian share considers their penetration into the mobile phone market where Microsoft has made little if any headway thus far.  Even with that and with all the handhelds built on Palm, including the Handspring treo line of PDA phones, Microsoft is eating up the competition.  I love it.

"Having Motorola on board is a big help for Microsoft," said analyst Rachel Lashford, "Most of Microsoft's smart phone shipments so far have been tied to the Orange network, but with the MPx200 becoming available on other operators' networks and with more models appearing over the coming months, we would expect shipments to increase substantially. PalmOne's Treo 600 hasn't done as well in EMEA as elsewhere; it needs more models and broader operator coverage to become a contender in the smart phone space. The momentum in this segment, however, remains with the Symbian-based vendors."

In the interest of full disclosure, my own personal device is an HP IPAQ 4155 (builtin WiFi, Bluetooth, SD slot).  I love that device.  It's small, light, sturdy, sleak and it screams, even with all the crap I put on it.  Bottom line…It looks like Microsoft has finally produced a mobile operating system in WME 2003 that device makers can take to market with compelling and reliable solutions.

Thanks to our friends over at PocketPCThoughts.com for pointing out this new release.

Microsoft has released a connector to install on your PC that will allow you to connect Outlook 2002 or 2003 to a Lotus Domino 5.x or 6.x server. It will sync email, tasks, appointments and contacts. It requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP on the client side. The reason I am posting this is if this allows Outlook to connect directly to Notes, will this allow you to install ActiveSync and sync with your Notes server without third party software?

So…I did it, I bit the bullet and surfed over to WWW.VONAGE.COM and signed myself up.  Yesterday I received my new motorola VOIP adaptor (two lines), plugged it into my new NetGear 802.11g wireless AP/firewall/router and within in seconds I had dialtone. 

Now I'm just waiting for Vonage to transfer my existing service from Verizon and away I go.  WooHoooo..my temporary number is clear as a bell on Vonage.  It's a beautiful thing, and at 19.99 a month for 500 minutes (I use my cellphone quite a bit these days, even at home), it's a steal.

More on my experiences in a few days when Verizons cuts my cord. Ahhh…free at last… I can feel the 01010101010101 flowing through my ears drums.

Following on from Mike's last post regarding RSS readers on mobile devices, here's an excellent thread for those of you who are sometimes connected PocketPC information junkies.  I've been following this thread on PocketPCThoughts.com.  Sorry for all you Palm readers, but I promise we'll get to you soon.

I've become quite addicted to my mobile RSS reader.  I've tried a bunch, but ultimately I chose PocketRSS 1.30 from AtomicDB.com.  Truth be told, I'm a PocketPC junkie.  I just picked up a new IPAQ 4155 and love it.

Oh…and for those of you who want to post to your Moveable Type blogs while on the road and have a your PocketPC handy, there is no better app than they recently upgraded Pocket SharpMT 2.4 from my friend Randy over at RandyRants.com.

Are you a Time Warner RoadRunner subscriber who lives and plays in San Antonio? Well…today's your lucky day.  TWC announced that they are providing FREE…that's right FREEEEE hotspot access to their San Antonio based subscribers.

Time Warner Cable today announced the availability of a "Road Runner Speed Zone" in San Antonio. It provides free public Wi-Fi — to Road Runner customers. Businesses that sign up will be able to draw traffic from Time Warner Cable's pool of 650,000 high-speed Internet customers across Texas who can use the service for free. All others must pay, of course.

To access Time Warner Cable Speed Zones, wireless users must have an existing Road Runner e-mail address and password, or purchase/receive cards from Road Runner Speed Zone businesses in 15, 30 or 60-minute increments, or pay with a credit card for access time.

While there are no plans for a national rollout at this time (WAAHHHHH…I'm sick of paying T-mobile to sit in Starbucks and sip latte) one must imagine a time where this service becomes available in major US cities.  The question is…how?  T-Mobile has Starbucks and Borders locked up and Verizon has just about every phone booth that matters in New York, lit.  So where does RoadRunner go?  The only place left is Barnes and Noble, but the foot print is too small.  So, who do they partner with in New York city that will give them the footprint that they need without charging them an arm and a leg?

If they are to remain consistent with the San Antonio model this would be a value add service that can compete with the free services that Verizon offers their DSL subscribers.  My bet is that the service just isn't feasible for TWC in NYC. Thoughts?  Sounds like things just got a bit more interesting in the Wi-Fi hotspot game.

Update:  Thanks to Eric for pointing out that B & N was already taken by Cometa.  So, who's next on the list for TWC?  Dunkin Donuts?  Wendys?  Here's a novel idea…The New York Public Library?  Any thoughts for TWC?!?!? I really want my FREE Wi-Fi!!!

A tech visionary and one of my personal favorite bloggers, Clay Shirky weighs in on the rise of VOIP.

The question is no longer whether voice is going to become an internet application, but when.

...

If Plan A is "Replace the phone system slowly and from within," Plan B is far more radical: "Replace the phone system. Period."

A recently released study from Empower Interactive, a British tech firm, has revealed that 65% of European cellphone users are receiving at least 5 spam SMS messages a week.

London-based technology company Empower Interactive said that 65 percent of Europe's cell phone users report receiving up to five unsolicited text messages a week on their handsets. "We are certainly going to see a significant acceleration in the coming years," said Richard Shearer, CEO of Empower Interactive.