The C block is open for business

Since the reserve was met, the lucky winner will be obliged to live with Google’s open access ruling.

Spectrum Auction: The C-Block Bidding Is Over at .7 Billion - Bits - Technology - New York Times Blog

We have a winner. But we don’t know who it is.

In the second round of bidding in the government’s spectrum auction today, there were no new bids for the C block of frequencies, the most attractive license that will allow someone to start or add to a national wireless voice and data network. The high bid from this morning stands at $4,713,823,000. Since the rules would require anyone else who wanted to buy those frequencies to bid in this round, it appears that there is no one else trying to compete.

If you can’t beat ‘em …

Eeeew.

Web 2.0 Goes to Work

At the same time, organizations still need to maintain a central concentration of computing expertise, Greenfield told InternetNews.com. If IT is smart, he said, “They’ll befriend the über-user, who becomes an extension of the IT department.”

IT Dinosaurs

Here’s a good article that explores the question of the extinction of  Enterprise IT.  Its chock full of common sense goodness for CIOs and IT department heads.  One such suggestion is to form a rapid-response “incubator” to provide quick functionality while you slowly perform a risk assessment after the fact.

Are You Obsolete?

Anthony Bradley, an analyst at Gartner Inc., foresees “a significant shift in power that IT ignores at its own peril.” With free Internet applications, Web platforms and social software, “the consumer side of the world is driving most technology advancement, not enterprise IT,” he says.

Spectrum is spectrum.

As the bidding continues for ownership of the 700 MHz band, stories surface that remind us that Google has wireless plans such that “failure is not an option”

Google Eyes Free Spectrum - Forbes.com

But along with taking part in the FCC’s auction, Google has also been trying to get into the so-called “white space”–slivers of unlicensed, unused spectrum that lie between television channels. And that makes the telcos nervous.

Report: Sprint, Clearwire in new talks on WiMAX partnership

Talks are back on between Sprint and Clearwire over the future of WiMAX and a possible national network. The two companies are reportedly considering ambitious plans for a joint venture backed with outside funding from deep-pocketed companies like Google and Intel.

A good review of Java EE 5 servers

Glassfish.

Why are we not using Java EE 5? | Java Zone

Today the application server race is completely different from few years ago.Websphere is the number one for big projects and, as usual, is late and is still not Java EE 5 compatible. On the other hand, just when companies had started to use open source with JBoss, JBoss has left the race and version 5 is still in beta.Weblogic, the very innovative company (you should look at Weblogic Virtual Edition) has been bought by Oracle. God knows what will happen. GlassFish is by far the best open source Java EE 5 app server. But people still don’t know it well. And if some do, they immediately remember the previous reference implementations made by Sun (the ones used to play with the Java Petstore) that were not usable for real life project. GlassFish is.

Last.fm on demand…

On demand music at last.fm was announced last week, but this article sheds a little light on why the majors shifted their position to allow such anathema.  It looks like CBS plans to use Last.FM for that little of that old social-graph content marketing.

How Last.fm Will Create “Communities Around Content” - ReadWriteWeb

So we can imagine every song, every artist played or featured on a CBS property most likely will be referenced, cross-referenced, and made available through Last.fm, giving CBS another way to reach like-minded consumers who want to share their interests with others.

The more people go to Last.fm to hear what song was just played on “CSI:NY”, the more money CBS and Last.fm make off advertising and residual sales. Imagine at the end of the show a text crawl noting that the music tonight can be heard at Last.fm. On the Last.fm side of the equation, there can be season-long playlists from CBS properties, conveniently cross-referenced, tagged, and shared.

Lotus On Ubuntu

Not just any Lotus.  Its that new Enterprise 2.0 collaboration software version.  On Ubuntu.  For the Enterprise.  Is this the way Web 2.0 is going to sneak into the Enterprise?  On the coattails of Linux? 

Lotus Notes 8.5 to fully support Ubuntu Linux 7.0 - Computerworld UK - The Voice of IT Management

IBM believes Linux on the enterprise desktop finally ready for widespread adoption. To meet future demand it is preparing to deliver its next versions of Lotus Notes enterprise collaboration software and Lotus Symphony office productivity applications for the first time with full support for Ubuntu Linux 7.0.

Advert

The roll out will occur sometime in the second half of this year.

Use your cell phone to send email

Is that a catchy headline or what?   But this is definitely a new twist.  You dial in to Jott’s main number, and a voice menu lets you dictate an email or reminder and then send it out to pre-configured contacts (Plaxo-supported or CSV import for the rest of us). 

Their slogan is : don’t text and drive … use Jott instead.

So how good is the speech recognition?  I used my cell phone at 2 bars to toss it a little rapid-fire Lincoln.  Here’s what it got. 

Created - Jan 24 - 1:25 pm “A for scoring 7 years ago our fathers brought forth on this covenant a new nation. He delivered and dedicated the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Messages at normal speeds and common language are practically error free.

Jott™ - Official Site

Real Estate Search Engines

A good summary article of real estate search engines and their design by way of introducing a new player, Roost.

Real-Estate Search Engine Roost Launches With Full MLS Listings

What makes Roost different is that, instead of trying to list all properties in the U.S. as Zillow or CyberHomes do, or take in feeds from individual real estate brokers as Trulia does, it is negotiating with Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) in each metro area to get a comprehensive set of houses on sale. Redfin also taps into the MLS. (The MLS is what real-estate brokers contributeto and use to find homes on the market, and up until recently MLS data was well-guarded from the Web). Roost launches with more than a dozen cities/MLSs, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Washington, D.C. (Notably absent are San Francisco and New York).

Try out ReadBurner

The new ReadBurner service is a winner.  I’ve included the following post from their development blog from yesterday.  It looks like they are tweaking all the things.  The one difficult thing remaining looks like reducing the number of duplicates, which is surprisingly small already.  This is definitely one to add in to your Pipes, AideRSS, or FeedHub if you got them.

ReadBurner

I’ve integrated another filter to show items with a minimum definable share count. It’s not yet integrated into the interface. Sorry folks - I just need some rest. You can still use and play around with it by manipulating the Get Parameters in the URL. Just add &ms=3 for a minimum share count of 3 shares. This is particularly interesting for the most recent section. You can hide away all the one time shared items.

The parameter also works for the RSS feeds. Here’s an example for Most Recent | English | min 3 shares

http://www.readburner.com/rss.php?s=mr&l=1&ms=3

There’s another little update for the RSS feeds: you can now see the Autho, the Source and how many people shared it right in Google Reader.