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| Wednesday, June 29, 2005 |
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WiFi4NY 
Following the money
Cluestick fungo
Loose links
| | Found here that a podcast of my Syndicate closing keynote is up. I'll have the accompanying slides up today. |
Google is a Windows company
| | Yes, Google has what is probably the world's largest Linux back end. But when it makes client applications, it makes them for Windows. Desktop search, the Toolbar, Picasa and now Google Earth are all Windows-only. At least a Mac version of Google Earth is promised. But given the predilictions behind these other tools, I'm not holding my breath. As for Linux or cross-platform versions for any apps or tools (other than ones that work in any browser), there's little evidence of interest. |
| | Yes, I know that it only makes sense to make client software first for the platform with nine out of the ten slices in the market's pie. But it's that tenth slice that keeps the company making the other nine from enjoying a monopoly. At fighting Microsoft's client monopoly, Google isn't helping much. Quite the contrary, in fact. |
| | I hate that Google doesn¹t wait to release software on all platforms simultaneously, as they are an Internet company, and I think being an Internet company means keeping the Internet free, not locking it down to one Operating System. |
Flat armadillo leverage
| | Follow-up from Dave: Didn't have to go to Radio Shack, I had such a cable, and Doc is right, it works. Glad to help. :-) |
Life in credit card silos, cont'd
| | The class action suit claims that ALL account holders that may have been exposed to a breach should be notified - whether fraud has occurred or not. |
| | The distinction here is important: Until this point, US law has defaulted to the idea that the individual does NOT own the information a company possesses about them (via interaction), but they do have rights of control over that information. UK laws are quite the opposite (they emphasize ownership). |
| | This argument is actually an argument around the *control* aspect: do I, as an individual, control my account to the extent that I can demand to know whether or not a potential breach has occurred? Or do I not control it that much? |
| | If ownership is not the issue (as it is *not* under current laws), then *where* are the lines of control drawn? This is one to watch. |
Little FM transmitters
| | And btw, to Archos, you should really have a mini FM transmitter. Every high-end MP3 device should have a good one built in. Do the Belkin ones work worth a damn? I bought an El Cheapo brand transmitter at Target (it was all they had) and it didn't work. The signal was too weak. |
| | Okay, here's the story on little portable FM transmitters. You can read the details or go straight to my simple fix for the weakness problem, after the indented section below. |
| | First, they have to be weak. That's to comply with Part 15 of the FCC rules and regulations, which restricts the ability of devices to cause interference with legal signals, especially those of licensed radio stations. The limit is .25mv /m (millivolts/meter) of signal strength into a quarter wave antenna (roughly what you've got with a typical whip antenna on your car) at 3 meters from the transmitting antenna. That's a near-fringe signal. For an example, here's the predicted coverage for Boston's WBUR/90.9fm. The red line is 2.5mv, or "local" coverage. The purple line .5mv for "distant" and the blue line is .15mv for "fringe." So, .25 falls between "distant" and "fringe" at three meters from the transmitting antenna. |
| | Now, the inverse square law does apply. That means the signal strength can be half the value at twice the distance: .125mv at 6 meters, .0625mv at 12 meters and so on. A good FM radio will get a listenable signals in mono down to .003mv (3 microvolts) and even less. That's what you'd get, under ideal conditions, at about 200 feet from the transmitting antenna of a signal that's legal under Part 15. |
| | Now, in nearly all of the urban and suburban U.S., you will find a signal of .003mv or better on every channel from 88.1 to 107.9. In most of those areas, the dial is packed with strong signals that that obliterate weaker signals on nearby frequencies. Which means that you'll need a strong signal from your little transmitter to compete, even if your transmitter is in the car and the interfering signal is coming from 30 miles away. And, if you're travelling, you'll need to keep switching to relatively open frequencies. |
| | Credit where due: car radios are made to work under less-than-ideal conditions, and are, as a rule, much better than the FM receivers in most home audio systems. (Years ago, manufacturers of home audio systems cared about FM. Now they don't. They think you only listen to CDs and surround-sound Video. To them, FM is old hat. It has tail fins.) I rent a lot of different cars, and I haven't found one yet with a bad FM receiver. (Lots that are hard to use, but none that are bad.) |
| | I don't know the transmitter power of a typical portable FM transmitter, such as the Belkin Tunecast II, which I've been using for the last year, but it's very low. In my house I also have a Ramsey FM-100, which puts out .25 watts; and I'd say the Belkin puts out a fraction of the Ramsey's signal. But that's at least partly because it lacks a good antenna. Rather than an external antenna, it uses the audio input cord, which is only a few inches long. More about this below. |
| | Licensed radio stations come in a variety of classes, but run up to 100,000 watts and more, radiating from the tops of mountains, skyscrapers and towers up to 2000 feet high (which are quite common on the South and Midwest). The weakest "local" stations have a maximum power of 3,000 watts at 300 feet above average terrain (though they drop the power on a sliding scale when the antenna height rises above 300 feet). Noncommercial stations (those below 92MHz on the dial, with a few exceptions grandfathered in the commercial band) operate with powers as low as 10 watts, though many are quite huge. KQED/88.5 in San Francisco is 110,000 watts, and radiates from a mountaintop, making it by far the biggest station in the Bay Area. Yet here in Santa Barbara, the top public station is a 4-watt "translator" on 102.3 of KCLU/88.3 from Thousand Oaks. Translators operate between one and hundreds of watts. |
| | In any case, a little FM transmitter has a lot to compete with. |
| | Make the antenna longer by adding a headphone extention cord: female at one end and male at the other. Put it between your audio player (iPod, Archos or whatever) and your transmitter. Stretch it out. The signal increase is remarkable. My Belkin TuneCast II is useless without it, and a workhorse with it. Here's one that Radio Shack sells. |
| | One more thing. These little transmitters blow through their AAA batteries. When traveling, be sure to use the car power adapter (the Belkin comes with one). |
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