Back in the day, say 18 years ago, it was a real pain to get source material for information experiments. There was the Cranfield collection, a whopping 1,400 documents. If you wanted anything like an 'organically grown' hypertext collection, there was the ISI Citation Index though it was almost impossible to get access. If you wanted a sample of a live conferencing system, there was the EIES bulletin board in a test tube run by Murray Turoff at NJIT. Doing anything with these took a serious staff and budget, given the limits of computing at the time

This bit of history is just to emphasize my wonder at where we've arrived. In the space of a few days, the issue of power laws and their application to the Web and blogosphere arises. A collection of individuals on their own empirically verify the hypothesis, check out the 'mobility' question, and knock together a public tool based on the insights. I just wanted to be sure you all appreciate how unprecedented and wonderful this is. Just like the old Scientific American Amateur Scientist columns tried to do, an entire discipline is being opened for inquiry and experiment by the non-professional.

(By the way, there are list of more interesting analytic tools, many of them free, in the Google Directories for Social Sciences and Knowledge Management.)
7:05:26 PM    

Living up to its usual standards of energy policy, the California PUC is apparently listening to some utilities that want to impose 'exit fees' on businesses that have the cheek to put up PV arrays and generate their own power.

Yo, morons: Imported energy! Global warming! Summer browouts! Clue!! You get along the learning curve toward efficient PV by subsidizing, not taxing, or by at least keeping your dead regulatory hand out of the pie. Where do we get these people?

If you're so misfortunate as to run a California business large enough to be the target of these vultures, there are instructions on where to bitch here. Comments due by 2/27.
3:51:15 PM    

• 802.16a final approval
• List of 802.16 related stories maintained by standards chair
• Active standards members
• My own previous 802.16 post
• OFDM Forum major sponsors (not just 802.16): Philips, Wi-LAN, Motorola, Nokia, Alcatel, 4G Networks, Breezecom (Alvarion), Infineon, Intersil, Redline, Runcom Technologies (.il), Samsung, Sasken Technologies, Solectek, TCFI
• Flarion proprietary flash-OFDM, mobility option
• Alvarion 'BreezeACCESS' proprietary OFDM; influential in 802.16 standards process
• Wi-LAN of Canada - W-OFDM, one of the standard PHYs in 802.16a, though appears to have little support from others. Litigious patent owner. Licensed to Philips.
• Broadcom VOFDM modem, former BWIF backer, current status?
• Nextnet OFDM
• Broadstorm described in this survey
• Iospan proprietary MIMO-OFDM - antenna diversity, patents issued
• BeamReach Adaptive Multibeam OFDM
• Runcom (Israel) OFDMA, DVB provider
• Recent survey article

3:13:46 PM    

A funny short piece over at EE Times. Cruel, but fair.
2:57:43 PM