QuakeBook

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Read more! Sometimes, we all have to put aside our own concerns to help others. The catastrophe in Japan has led to a group of people around the world coming together, via Twitter, to create Quakebook - an anthology of first hand experiences of the Tohoku earthquake.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


I am extremely proud to have been one of those people (one of the editors, blog creator, and part of the Yammer promo community) and that Amazon, Sony, Apple and others have all come on board to help us get the book out to the widest audience possible. Yoko Ono, Barry Eisler and Jake Adelstein have all contributed pieces to the Quakebook, which should be on sale in a variety of formats over the next few days.

Please tweet about it, blog about it, talk about it, and then BUY it! All revenue will go directly to the Red Cross in Japan.


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Amazon #fail

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Read more! Amazon fail to support Japan #QuakeBook

As we reach 14 days today since the earthquake and tsunami, and the consequential nuclear dilemma, a global group of authors, photographers, journalists and bloggers have expressed their frustration at Amazon's non-support of the publication 2:46 QuakeBook


This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com


This book includes a multitude of first-hand accounts of the earthquake and its consequences, with all profits going directly to the Red Cross. Such accounts have been noticeably missing from the worldwide press as many journalists have been pulled from the story to report on Libya, or pulled from the region as nuclear fears rise.

As the deadline approaches at 2:46 Friday 25th March, it seems Amazon will not assist in making this book available worldwide.

For a global corporation to even presume that the many volunteers who have made this possible could be 'ambulance chasers' begs the question whether Amazon have their finger on the button at all with how social media, voluntary action and the severity of the disaster in Japan is affecting their customer base, worldwide.

Contact: @ourmainabiko #quakebook
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Flight of fancy

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Anyone breed pigeons?

Please can we borrow one to replicate the experiment featuring Winston the pigeon?

Actually, if anyone would care to pay, I can do a more interesting experiment involving myself and a slightly different means of flight.

Were I to wish to upload the contents of my portable IcyBox hard drive (currently standing just shy of 100GB), over a typical UK ADSL connection, that would take me at least 37 days on my connection of 256k up.

However, in Japan, Bangkok, Hong Kong, many cybercafes offer 1Gbps symmetrical connectivity. So, my plan would be to start the upload on my connection here, get online and find a ticket, book it, set off with a duplicate copy of my hard drive, fly to Japan, find a cybercafe, upload the copy, do some sightseeing (Mount Fuji beckons!), buy some funky IT kit, and head home. I think I should beat the UK upload by at least 4 weeks and finally get a week's holiday.

If someone fancies trying it over a better ADSL connection, I still think I will be home 5 days or so before it has finished sending.

100GB is nothing in this day and age. If I was on a FTTH connection similar to those available in rural areas of Sweden, I wouldn't even have time to find the ticket before the job was done.

Need I point out what this limited connectivity does to everyday productivity, let alone (mis)use of our leisure time.......

(Upload Maths made easy!)


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Japan again

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Read more! It really is more than time to read it and weep. It is time for many of the informed consultants, ex-telco workers, whistle blowers, and informed grassroots folk to really bust some of the telco myths about costs of FTTH. If the Japanese telcos can provide 100Mbps symmetrical FTTH for £30/month, then why can't we?

We know opex costs for FTTH are way lower than for ADSL, for starters. We know that the ROI on FTTH infrastructure investment is down to less than a decade (where telco returns used to be 15-20 years), we know that the cost of data is now approaching zero, we know that once FTTH is enabled, customers flock to it out of choice over ADSL, we know that energy bills etc are substantially reduced.

So, what is going on?? Why are the telcos being allowed to hold a nation such as the UK over a barrel with their dithering and, one could almost consider saying, "Lies, damned lies and statistics".

And it isn't just the telcos. There was a consensual holding of breath when DBERR spoke at the BSG conference about there being no evidence of need yet for British business and consumers. Did we really hear right? Are the DTI really saying that to such an informed audience? The breath-holding continued with Antony Walker's sop to the telcos about not doing it yet, but doing it right.

It is time for many flowers to bloom. There won't be one correct solution. There won't be one national network. There may well be new technologies in a few years which surpass what the early adopters put in. But as with all techie developments, when they first come out, there will inevitably be some issues, standards to develop, and higher costs to deploy. So, the early adopters have a chance to start educating the market, creating that 'desire' for something better, encouraging competition in the market place, innovating.

And those early adopters will undoubtedly show many of the large companies how it is to be done. With the current global financial dilemma, it will be those fleet of foot, able to blag and JV, think out of the box, and operate on a tight budget who will begin to install networks where the telcos are unable to tread because they are slow moving behemoths.

And because, one suspects, the telcos have spent so long spinning everyone a line about FTTH, in order to sweat the copper asset and protect their shareholders' interests, that they are starting to believe their own myths.


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Jealous? We should be

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Read more! Oh heck, this could ruin your weekend! NTT offers a daily cap of 30GB upload. Yes, you read that right, upload.

OK, so the news is several months old - which actually makes it worse for us UK users, but hell, that's a terabyte a month of data upload.

But then I guess if you have dished 100Mbps fibre pipes to your users, and bandwidth costs are approaching zero globally, it isn't very much at all.

It really is so tempting to relocate. I mean, let's be real: I could fly to Japan, upload 100 gig of files from a cybercafe, and be back before they uploaded here. How far behind are we falling??


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