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Today's blog
started 8/3/2001; 10:46:06 AM - last post 8/6/2001; 3:35:08 PM

Doc Searls - Today's blog

8/3/2001; 2:46:06 PM (reads: 4197, responses: 10)

Psst! Wanna know why gossip outbuzzes buzz?

Read this. Sometimes I think my words are but logs in Marek's fireplace.

Not speaking of which, check out all the different themes here.

That list also contains some pretty fucking good blogs.

Speaking of which, Kevin has a good essay by about fucking your television. He also pushes back a bit on Marek right here.

Hasta luego

Okay: off to the Fiesta Parade, for which I'm late.

Nothing impersonal

Dig JD's latest, on personalization, among other things. I'd tell ya more, but I'm outa time. Just go there.

Woe-Fi? Hope not.

By the way, does anybody know if there's an 802.11b card that will work in a Mac Powerbook G3/400? How about one for a G3/333 desktop? I'll need cards for both to put those boxen on a Wi-Fi network in our house. Both have standard backplanes (PCMCIA and PCI, respectively), but drivers are the issue, it would seem. Somebody last night told me that some cards for PC laptops would work on the PowerBook, but I'm not so sure. Airport drivers that come with Sys 9.1 and OS X seem to care only about airport cards, which only come for the iBook and Titanium, far as I know (which isn't nearly far enough).

Field of beans

When I read what Glenn is writing about Starbucks' apparently clueless approach to deploying wireless access for customers in its many stores, my mind drifts to the conversation I just had with Craig Burton on the phone, about the need for a widespread presence infrastructure. Turns out that presence is a big part of Jabber's appeal. Craig and I are both on Jabber Inc. advisory boards.

What I see happening with commerical 802.11b deployment smacks excessively of bean counting (pun intended). And if I read Glenn right, Starbucks is basically just letting MobileStar do its thing all over the place, just to bring in customers.

My question is, does the system work? The fact that MobileStar has a "view by protocol" page suggests that this thing may be pretty durn complicated.

Now that's style

My pal Steve Chappell (whose company I gladly plug) points to a gallery of Sharon Tate photographs taken by his uncle Walter and kept safe from publicity for 35 years.

Today's blogrolling ratio: 1-to-3

Bryan Pfaffenberger is another colleague (and fellow ENFP) I've never met, but whose work I constantly appreciate. And he does a pile of it. Born in the City of Angels, he is now a professional Wahoo with a four-noun title: Associate professor of Technology, Culture and Communications at the University of Virginia (which just employed my largest cousin, Andy Heck, as a graduate assistant coach for its football team after he was unwisely cut by the Redskins this past February). Bryan's writing is deep, prolific and authoritative (e.g. he edits Webster's New World Dictionary of Computer Terms), but never pushy, which I really like.

And dig this: he's a blogger who has his classes blogging too:

PHP Weblog

Media Studies 317: Intellectual Property and Digital Media

Media Studies 308: Social Issues of Information Technology

BS phone home

Jim Florentine is a sarcastic prick from New Jersey who sits at home with a tape recorder waiting to torture telemarkeing callers. Then he puts the results on a CD. Funny stuff. Here are a few samples.

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Dori Smith - Re: Today's blog

8/3/2001; 8:40:33 PM (reads: 576, responses: 1)

I can speak from personal experience: if that G3/400 PowerBook is a Pismo, an Airport card will fit in there just fine.

Dori
Backup Brain

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Doc Searls - Re: Today's blog

8/3/2001; 9:01:55 PM (reads: 631, responses: 0)

Shoot. Says here that yours has "Airport support." Which means mine doesn't.

But I think that means yours has an internal space for an airport card (like the Titanium and the iBook).

So my question is: is there support in the form of non-Apple drivers and PCMCIA card HW, as there is with your basic PC laptop?

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Dori Smith - Re: Today's blog

8/4/2001; 1:32:53 AM (reads: 606, responses: 1)

My understanding (and I could well be wrong, but this is what I've been told) is that you can use any Wi-Fi certified PC card, and the Airport drivers should be able to see it and treat it like an Airport card.

There's a big long list of those here.

Dori
Backup Brain

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Wiley Hodges - Re: Today's blog

8/4/2001; 3:37:02 PM (reads: 628, responses: 0)

You can buy the Lucent/Agere WaveLAN/ORiNOCO PC cards from a number of mail order houses. They are available in Silver and Gold varieties, depending on the strength of encryption you choose.

Since the AirPort base station essentially contains a Silver card, that's all that you would probably want to purchase.

They work well on PowerBooks (tried on both my old PB3400 and on a G3), and you can download current (summer 2001) drivers for MacOS 8.6 and higher from www.wavelan.com.

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Glenn Fleishman - Re: 802.11b

8/4/2001; 3:47:57 PM (reads: 706, responses: 4)

I'm supposed to know how this stuff works, so let's see: a PowerBook G3/400 should have at least one normal PC card slot. Agere's Orinoco division just released their latest

The desktop G3: I think your best option is this one from Farallon. They're one of the only companies committed to legacy/PCI/Mac combinations.

Okay, as for Starbucks, you got my reaction dead on. Starbucks doesn't want to be involved but they want to take credit. If they'd wanted to be involved they would have offered combo deals: buy a latte and get 10 minutes free - limits people's time in the store and encourages them to come in. Buy $10 worth of drinks and merchandise, and get 45 minutes free. They hand you a card with a one-time login generated by their system. Otherwise, you'd pay a nominal amount: $8/hour or less.

But they don't want to drive this car. The last time they said Internet, the company's stock and reputation tanked. So this is an arm's length transaction. What continues to bother me, though, is that they cite Compaq as a partner and don't mention MobileStar. Compaq will be providing $100 million in retail systems (point of sale computers), HQ systems, servers, handhelds, networking equipment, etc., over five years. MobileStar is spending, as much as $100 million over three years on Starbucks.

Why emphasize the one you're paying money to rather than the one you're getting stuff for free from? There's a confidence gap.

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Glenn Fleishman - Re: Today's blog

8/4/2001; 3:48:59 PM (reads: 758, responses: 0)

The Airport drivers support only Lucent/Agere cards, and not all that well at times. But Agere released new Mac drivers two weeks ago.

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Doc Searls - Re: 802.11b

8/6/2001; 6:40:41 PM (reads: 712, responses: 3)

Thanks! Unfortunately, the model you mention is with "some Macintosh systems," including my my Beige G3/333 with the 510 model ROM. I suppose I could run a wire to that machine, but I'd rather not.

I suppose that I should find out if my ROM is just the 510 or the dreaded 510 ROM $77D.45F2. The System Profiler doesn't say. Maybe another utility would.

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Glenn Fleishman - Re: 802.11b