Test and post

test!

Dave LaDuke on CBS Marketwatch

Here's a direct URL for RealPlayer access to CBS MarketWatch's story on WiFi. Good job, Dave!

Dave

Steven Vaughn-Nichols reviews the Sputnik Gateway 1.0

Yeah, I had no idea, just happened to catch it on NewsForge today. The long and short - a positive review!

Work on Vertigo continues.

Dave

t2

test 2 -- David L. Sifry dsifry@sputnik.com Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Sputnik Incorporated Phone: 408.497.3120 Fax: 415.354.3342 Secure, Managed 802.11 http://www.sputnik.com/

t-t-t-test

Hmmm. -- David L. Sifry dsifry@sputnik.com Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Sputnik Incorporated Phone: 408.497.3120 Fax: 415.354.3342 Roam for free when you share 802.11 bandwidth: http://www.sputnik.com/

Best Buy closes wireless registers

Whoa - well, this is the first in what is assured to be a flurry of wireless security articles. It is only a matter of time until a major company is hacked via their open 802.11 network.

Chip makers question need to redraw 802.11 map

An article in Comm Times on the work being done by chip companies to ensure interoperability and seamless handoff between RF and 802.11 chipsets

Chip makers question need to redraw 802.11 map

An article in Comm Times on the work being done by chip companies to ensure interoperability and seamless handoff between RF and 802.11 chipsets

Best Buy closes wireless registers

Whoa - well, this is the first in what is assured to be a flurry of wireless security articles . It is only a matter of time until a major company is hacked via their open 802.11 network.

Chip makers question need to redraw 802.11 map

An article in Comm Times on the work being done by chip companies to ensure interoperability and seamless handoff between RF and 802.11 chipsets

Steve DeWitt quits Sun, Vivek Mehra becomes VP and GM of Cobalt Group

Part of the wake of Zander's retirement announcement, the Register zooms in on Sun's Linux strategy. Good news for Vivek, he's a good guy.

Joltage Networks Names Nicholas Negroponte to Board

From VentureWire:

NEW YORK -- Joltage, which provides Wi-Fi software to businesses such as cafes or health clubs that then offer wireless Internet access to their customers, said it appointed new investor Nicholas Negroponte to its board of directors.

Read the full story.

Ed Zander announces retirement

Hmm, Sun is losing lots of execs lately.

Woodside Networks completes their Series B

>From The Daily Deal:

Wireless networking systems developer Woodside Networks Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. said Tuesday that it has raised an additional $4 million from Nokia Venture Partners, following a $20 million second round of funding announced in February. The venture firm joins Sevin Rosen Funds and Accel Partners as backers of Woodside Networks, which has raised $32 million to date. A developer of wireless local area networks, Woodside Networks maintains an office in Breukelen, The Netherlands, in addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto.

Test of Blogit

Test of the new email-to-blog script I just wrote, called blogit.

Alan Reiter notes Glenn's Blog on us

Alan Reiter wrote about us again in his blog today:

Sputnik info: Yesterday I wrote, very briefly, about Sputnik. If you want to learn more about Sputnik, check out Glenn Fleishman's 802.11b Networking News entry about Sputnik. Glenn says: "Based on what I've seen, they may set a new high-water mark for creating configuration tools that work, and that average human beings can understand."

Mesh Networks to offer software-based 802.11 repeater?

Hmmm, interesting. According to Alan Reiter's weblog which he's been updating from the Technologic Partners Conference, Mesh Networks is beta testing a low-cost repeater-router for extending the range of 802.11. Basically, the MeshNetworks software creates a, well, mesh network, for your existing WiFi system.

Hmmm, I wonder if this is possible without breaking the 802.11 standard - In other words, I can see you turning a PC into a black-box repeater, but I don't see how they could turn it into a repeater AND still allow you to use the box as a wireless node on the network. Perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps we will all need to download some client software (that'll be windoze only, of course). Still, it is an intriguing idea - they are looking at an embedded product with MSRP of $60.

Actually, as I read Reiter's post more carefully (pardon me, I still haven't had my morning coffee), it looks like Mesh Networks is trying to do something like what we've done - turn a PC with broadband connectivity and a WiFi card into a Mesh Networks AP. Well, if that's the case, just go and download our code, it's free and available today...

Something to keep an eye on.

A test of email-enabled links

So have a look at this link to slashdot.

Cool, email-to-blog interface

OK, I'm going to try to update this blog more often by using the new Blogger Pro email-to-blog interface. Shit, I send out so many tidbit emails a day, sending it to a blog should actually make my site more current, and not interfere with my favorite way of e-interaction, email.

Boy, just when you think that Real may be coming round, yet again they remind you that they suck. Hey look, I'm all for companies making money - ya gotta do that - but the thumb-our-nose-at-our-customer attitude that just seeps out of the Real website sucks the big one. Case in point - go and try to get the RealPlayer player for Linux without using external resources (like Google). Go ahead. Try to get it. What, no search bar? Windows-only client downloads? No options? Yup. For those of you who just want it, here's the form.

Hurray NPR! I'm finally able to listen to the daily NPR programs that I often don't get to hear, like Morning Edition and All Things Considered - and the folks at NPR have made available via realaudio stream the shows right after they've finished their US broadcast. In other words, I can listen to today's Morning Edition at 9:00AM PST, right after it finishes playing on KQED, my local radio station. And through the magic of a linux box connected to my stereo and a great little program called trplayer, I can listen to realaudio streams without having to put up with those annoying take-over of your computer pop-ups that the current Real client imposes on people. And, since it is playing over my stereo, it sounds just like the real thing - I can't notice a difference. Now all I have to do is create a little cron script to auto play my favorite NPR programs on demand, and attach it to my MP3 web server. Thankfully, the NPR folks have created a logical URL system that I can put into a script. One more step towards having a RiVo - a TiVo-like device for Radio. I was wondering how I would do this with such a limited number of radio stations out there, but now I know - I can do it by recording streaming media onto a hard disk so that you can take it with you wherever you go and listen, just like an MP3 player. Imagine...

God, I just love This American Life. Absolutely the best show on radio today. Nobody else comes close.

I just got turned on to HumanClock. Gotta love it, very creative, without being pushy. Thanks to Seth Godin for the link. By the way, whatever happened to Collaborative Filtering? It's a filter based on the simple observation that people with similar preferences will tend to be interested in the same things. Is it something that has only migrated into personalization systems like Amazon.com's book recommendation system? Or is it an idea that has fallen out of favor? Sure, there are some problems, namely, that someone has to be on your site long enough for you to get an idea of their preferences. But I think that the idea is still largely untapped.

I've been listening to Malcolm Gladwell on KQED. What a great speaker. I really enjoyed his book, The Tipping Point and it turns out he's just as fun in real life (well at least on the radio). It turns out that he's written tons of stuff for The New Yorker, too. I'm looking forward to reading all of the archive, but I'd better do it slowly to enjoy it.

I've been working on an secure web-based document management system, called Projectdocs. The basic premise is the following: Need to share documents? Work in geographically disperse teams? Having a hard time keeping track of the most up-to-date documents? Like to be able to get to your documents wherever you are? Wouldn't it be great if...

• All the versions of your documents were automatically saved somewhere?
• You got a short descriptive email whenever someone added or updated a document?
• It was easy to invite other people to collaborate?
• This was all self-serve, without having to talk with someone in MIS or IT?

www.projectdocs.com  

I've just gotten back from a week on the east coast - first I was at the NCTP Industry & Academia portfolio meeting, went up to NYC to see some family, and then went back to Baltimore, good old charm city, to give a speech on entrepreneurship to a class at Johns Hopkins, my alma mater. I did a presentation called Rules for Entrepreneurs. It is a collection of stories and hard-earned experiences I've learned in my experiences as a consultant and as founder and executive of Securemote, Linuxcare, and Sputnik. In a tribute to Guy Kawasaki, one of the entrepreneurs and evangelists I've had tremendous respect for (from way back in the Macintosh days), I made a Top 15 list: Rules for Entrepreneurs 15. Never fear mistakes. 14. There are no dumb questions. 13. Serendipity is your friend. 12. Know yourself. 11. Know your customer. Listen. 10. Know your competition. 9. Vision is easy. Execution is hard. 8. Focus, focus, focus! 7. Get a great team. 6. Don't forget your friends. 5. Understand your business model. 4. Never ask someone to do something you wouldn't do yourself. 3. Do Good. 2. Do it because you love it. 1. Dream. You can change the world. And 5 practical tips: 1. Incorporate in Delaware. 2. Everybody vests. 3. Do your own due diligence. 4. Beware of nepotism. 5. Get an employment contract! Maybe I'll write up a short description on each point sometime, if anyone is interested...

So you wanna be a hi-tech entrepreneur? Oy, it's a huge pain in the ass. First off, you've got to come up with the idea. Then you've got to bring together the team. You communicate the idea with the team, and you iterate, iterate, iterate. Then you come up with the business plan and its close cousin, the presentation (or preso, as we like to call it). Think you're doing well? Ha! You're not even started. You've got to get the lawyers and if you're lucky, they'll work at a discount, or even defer fees until you get funded. Then you've got to work on the pitch, which i everything. You've got to display a clear, concise story about the idea, but this time tailoring it to whomever you're talking with, be they customers, investors, potential employees or vendors. After all, this is all about creating something from nothing which is scratch-your-head-silly, if you really sit down and think about it. Someone was talking on a financial radio show today, and they asked, "Everyone's talking about this loss of wealth in the past few years, and before that they were talking about all of this wealth that was created during the thriving economy. Where did all that wealth go? Whose mattresses are bulging?" Well, that's just another way of looking at the fact that the best entrepreneurs create something from nothing. Forget all this bullshit about "increased productivity this", and "lowered costs that", and "more efficient that-other-thing". The most amazing thing is that wealth gets created when someone, through hard work, a good idea, and a lot of bullshit, actually pulls a rabbit from out of his ass. This rant begs the question, "so where did all that wealth go in the last 12 months?" Why, the rabbits crawled right back up into a whole lot of asses.

Just playing with a blog, wanted to see how blogger looks. Seeing if I can force formatting the way I like it from my web browser. You know, that kind of stuff. Cool.