I've noted in a previous post my predisposition toward active tags -- the EPC Class 3 tags.  I also noted that it would be a reasonably short period of time before we'd hear announcements.  This announcement from Matrics of true read/write tags seems to start the march toward active tags.

Matrics Inc. has announced the addition of read/write functionality to its RFID (radio frequency identification) tag product line. The company has started supplying read/write tags in limited quantities and says it will ramp up production in the second quarter of 2004. The new read/write tag will complement Matrics' existing RFID solutions by allowing...

[UsingRFID]

Thanks to the CapeScience Blog for directing us to this post about WS-Eventing.

Over at the Galactic Patrol, Bruce writes about a Microsoft/BEA/TIBCO-backed spec called Web Services Eventing (WS-Eventing): WS-Eventing is a standard that enables interoperable publish/subscribe systems.

[CapeBlog]

I have not looked into this, but the premise is quite appealling.  Has anyone out there got a sense of what RatchetSoft can really do?

RatchetSoft has announced the launch of its Ratchet-X beta program. Based on Service Oriented Mass Customization (SOMC) principles, Ratchet-X enables desktop software to be mass customized through leveraging the power of Web services.

...

Ratchet-X's technology allows users to leverage application context and semantics to directly invoke and orchestrate Web services from within the applications they already use. This capability in effect empowers the user to add new capabilities to existing applications.

We're likely to see more articles like this one, which calls out (at a high level) the difference in approach being taken by SAP and PeopleSoft.

The resource planning developers differ widely in their approaches to business automation, particularly depending on an enterprise's attitude toward IT.

This is a thoughtful and carefully written article by Harold Feld.  It's a good read and brings up a number of issues that are commonly found in a commercial ecosystem that relies on NGOs, standards bodies established by treaty (e.g. ISO or ITU), or industry groups to modulate the commercial behavior of major players in the market. 

I cannot help but think that this same type of issue will arise quite soon in other, related sectors.  I suggest that, after you read this article, you quickly re-read it and replace every reference to "ICANN" with "EPCglobal".   You don't need to replace "Verisign" ... They've established their presence as a fundament of the EPC environment by winning the contract to provide the root ONS.

Verisign has quickly announced added-value services for EPC Discovery, EPCIS management and EPC Trust Services. Of these, several are based on proprietary technologies and highly centralized architectures.   To believe that the UCC-EAN will be successful in their efforts to unify data synchronization and EPC information services under the EPCglobal banner, one must also assume EPCglobal's establishment of clearly defined "rules of engagement".  Let's hope that they engage in these efforts quickly and with real attention.

It's easy to dismiss Verisign's antitrust suit as a ploy to push through Sitefinder. But whether one loves Sitefinder or hates Sitefinder, the complaint raises a much more significant issue that won't go away even if ICANN lets Verisign roll out Sitefinder. At the heart of Verisign's complaint is the lack of any definable process for decisionmaking, and its a complaint shared by others. A settlement between Verisign and ICANN that does not create a clear process for decisionmaking at ICANN...

 

If ICANN had developed clearly delineated processes with a genuine right of independent review, and had done so three years ago when Verisign was inside the ICANN tent, it would not now face the current crisis. And yes, it is a crisis.

There are a lot of articles over the past couple of weeks about SAP's release of the new NetWeaver platform.  Among the most interesting aspects of the new release is their obvious concern with and attending to web services / SOA, and the implementation of what has previously been an entire suite of applications on multiple servers on a single server... which tends to favor the SMB sector and the free-standing organizational unit.

SAP AG announced the next iteration of its NetWeaver integration platform at the CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany, on Thursday. A second event to announce NetWeaver 2004 is scheduled at SAP's campus in Palo Alto, Calif., on Thursday.

[eWEEK Technology News]

 

SAP has unveiled the latest version of its NetWeaver integration and application platform, which for the first time has been designed as a stand-alone product.

[Wireless NewsFactor]

 

Forrester experts say SAP customers should consider NetWeaver for their next portal-centric or business intelligence projects--and ease into the rest of the NetWeaver stack.

[CNET News.com]

Of course we love standards... that's why we have so many of them.  Another reason to loose faith in the near-term arrival of UWB and ubiquitous "wireless firewire".

[March 17, 2004] The split between Motorola and the Multi-Band OFDM Alliance (MBOA) has deepened in recent days: The MBOA stated several days ago that they would be pursuing their own track independent of the IEEE 802.15.3a task group in which the UWB standard for high-speed short-range (10 meters or less) networking was mired.

 

The split deepened this week as noted in two reports. On Monday, the EE Times reported that Motorola has changed its proposal: Motorola is returning to the 802.15.3a task group a modified version of its direct sequence approach that has substantially higher throughput at very short ranges while still meeting the 10 meters/110 Mbps goal set by the group. At two meters, Motorola can exceed a gigabit per second. Motorola claims that this is the sweet spot for the kinds of applications to which UWB will be placed, like streaming video in home entertainment.

 

Meanwhile, the MBOA has revised its own standard farther away from the 802.15.3a draft: Their revision makes it much less likely that there will ever be interoperability by adding features at the MAC layer that handles addressing. This will make it easier to run ad hoc networks and mesh UWB systems. However, the MAC layer for 802.15.3a was already agreed to be the main 802.15.3 standard.

 

The conclusion is that we'll have two competing, incompatible UWB standards which will fight it out in the marketplace. Consumers lose: if you buy equipment from different consumer electronics makers that use different UWB standards, you'll be out of luck. ...

 

An online only sneak preview of Westbridge Technologies' XMS 3.0: With version 3.0, Westbridge Technologies' XML Security Gateway seeks to lock down SOAP traffic without imposing performance or management overhead.

 

In the year 2007, we WILL all be carrying around RFID tags, but the ones I'm speaking of will not be in our clothing as a result of supplychain applications.   They are more likely to be in our wallets (for NFC "swipeless" cards).  As for RFID readers?  They'll be in our phones as a means of getting our personal reading on the consumer product we're fondling in the store, or in order to get more detailed information from "smart" signage in a building.

Nokia has joined up with Royal Philips Electronics and Sony to establish a forum to promote the use of near field communications technology, the Finnish handset giant announced on Thursday.

Philips and Sony have been working on the technology, which allows consumer devices to wirelessly transmit data when they are placed near one another. The Near Field Communications Forum will work to standardize the technology and set up interoperability guidelines for devices and services. The goal of the group and the technology is to make it easier for device owners to send and receive data wirelessly

Two interesting stories which deliver the idea that personal communication devices ... the smartphone or, at least, competent phone ... will be the major delivery platform for music, either in the form of files (MP3s) or streams.  The next question is to what degree will the same platform be the delivery vehicle for video / multimedia?  It would seem that the stream is the only viable architectural answer...

Sony says it's coming out with a personalized radio service for cellphones. But not for the US. The service, which'll be part of their new "Connect" online music store, will probably only be available through European carriers, in the US and Japan you'll just be able get regular, non-personalized music streams. The audio fidelity isn't going to be that hot, either. Since it has to be sent over a regular GPRS data connection, the best they'll be able to offer is about 16 kilobits per second.

[Engadget]

 

Mobile Phones, and their role in our lives is in middle of change. One emerging area of use for mobile phones is as jukeboxes/MP3 player. Never mind the N-Gage, for this is going to be a truly large market according to A.T. Kearny, a respectable consultant group.

Mobile phone operators could claim 20 to 30 percent of all music sales by 2006 by introducing music downloads as network and handset technology improves, according to new analysis from global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Mobile operators are already among the winners in the music business and have found a way to make a profit.  Ring tone downloads account for nearly six percent of current music sales, a higher percentage of sales than CD singles.   In addition, ring tones were downloaded five times more frequently than music downloads over the Internet in 2003.

The biggest problem right now is the time it takes to download. However the higher speed networks would lick that problem. “Music companies act as if they still were record companies,” said Martin Fabel, a principal in A.T. Kearney’s media practice. “The industry is not yet prepared for selling digital content instead of a physical product like an album consisting of a cover, a disc and a booklet.  Consumers might not be interested in some songs on an album, but they have to buy them anyway.”

[Om Malik on Broadband]

More on the recent Trigo acquisition by IBM, and the completely understandable (inevitable?) comparison and eventual match-up between IBM and GXS.  I've posted about the role of data synchronization, and those constituents of the market that believe it to be the necessary precursor to successful inter-organizational EPC data exchange and applications.   Here are, arguably, the two biggest commercial interests with the right "chops" to make it happen.  GXS must certainly feel more than justified at its acquisition of Haht in light of the IBM move.  (And,  by now the analysts should  have figured this out.)

IBM plans to incorporate software from Trigo Technologies Inc., which it acquired last week for an undisclosed sum, into its WebSphere Business Integration middleware portfolio to provide data synchronization and PIM (product information management).

...

Meanwhile, GXS finalized its $30 million acquisition of PIM software developer Haht Commerce Inc. this month and has tripled its Haht development team. This year, GXS, of Gaithersburg, Md., will add capabilities bought from Haht, of Raleigh, N.C., into its business-to-business exchange software, combining Haht's Commerce Suite with GXS' Global Product Catalog platform to enhance data synchronization within the 65-million-item catalog, officials said.

Now that the tools are available, who's going to host the first WS-Interop show?  How about a LAN-party?

The Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) on Wednesday announced general availability of its tools for testing interoperability with the WS-I Basic Profile for use of Web services.

Final versions of the Web Service Communication Monitor and the Web Service Profile Analyzer are available at http://www.ws-i.org. Implementations are available for C# and Java.

More "fun with RFID"....

Nokia announced an RFID reading mobile phone accessory at CeBIT today. They are not targeting the consumer market with this, at least not yet, but personal RFID devices would be an equalizing influence in the coming RFID deployment feared by privacy advocates.

Personal RFID devices would let you scan objects to see if they had a tag. They could tell you when another RFID reader was active in your area, and best of all, they would enable services under YOUR control to exploit the presence of RFID tags.

For example, you could comparison shop without running from store to store -- zap the book you are browsing in the retail shop, click a button, and it shows up at home three days later for 1/2 the price.

Some coverage on the Nokia announcement:

[vnunet.com] 

[mobilemag.com]

[edubourse.com]

ComputerWorld has put together an interesting and wide-ranging collection of articles about privacy and compliance.  While some of it is pretty elementary and won't be news, there are some perspectives from the point of the CPO (Chief Privacy Officer), CIO and CTO that I found illuminating.

[ComputerWorld]

An interesting ... even fun !?!? ... article about RFID and how it's being considered as the basis for consumer oriented services.

Many fear and loathe RFID. Most could not care less. But nobody loves it, probably because it does nothing for us, and we can't play with it. However, this could be about to change.

Jeff Schneider has taken me to task, and it's my own fault.  What I had in my head as context, but didn't explain in the post, was the political creation I've heard in speeches designed to rally the electorate... images of the offshore outsourcing company as some sort of venal, unscrupulous bad guy out to take our jobs and, thereby the food from our children's mouths. (And, by the way, an image which is completed by the candidate taking up the battle and saving "our jobs.")

What I didn't say, and what Jeff's absolutely right to bring up, is the fact that people we know... our friends and colleagues ... have lost their jobs and it's HARD.  Anyone who's been here in Silicon Valley these past three years has witnessed the most horrendous employment disaster since there's BEEN a Silicon Valley.  We've all come so close to the Valley of the Shadow of Death that we've got trinkets from the souvenir stand. 

The flap is about...well, pissed off people that lost their jobs. 
...
The flap is about people that are great at their job who get let go based purely on cost. They weren't given the opportunity to accept a lower salary - after all, their employer has a mandate to move 25% of product engineering jobs offshore. The flap is about humans who felt disgraced by long-time employers. 
...

The flap is about people that are great at their job who get let go based purely on cost. They weren't given the opportunity to accept a lower salary - after all, their employer has a mandate to move 25% of product engineering jobs offshore. The flap is about humans who felt disgraced by long-time employers.

I've been puzzled by much of the noise being made about offshore outsourcing.  There are a number of reasons:

1) It's a premise of a free market economy that if someone can provide a product or service for which there is demand, at a price that is competitive, this is a "good thing."  It does not excuse behaviors like "dumping", in which the market player provides goods or services at below cost in order to unfairly drive competitors out of business. But, in the case of outsourcing to places like India, that's not the case.

2) The number of jobs we're concerned with is small.  Arguably, the total number of IT jobs at risk of being placed overseas is less than 1 % of the US workforce.  If we include call-center jobs, including some of the higher end tech support jobs, it may be between 3 - 4 %, but that's if ALL the jobs leave the country.

3) The un-employment figures in the US are not pretty, but the UNDER-employment figures need to be inspected.  That is, are qualified people available in the US to take the jobs?  I don't know, but what I DO know is that the US public education system is definitely NOT producing anywhere near as many moderately trained, competent technology service personnel.  This can be said of the degreed engineers as well as of the technicians who require nothing more than a real high-school education ... i.e., the ability to read, write, speak grammatically, manage a modicum of mathematics and have a level of comfort using commercial computer software.

4) The promise of the internet and globalizing technology is and has always been touted as permitting the previously disenfranchised nations to gain access to information, education and the communication infrastructure required to successfully compete in a world economy.  Did everyone who mouthed those words during the "boom" actually believe that they would not become competitive and not take business and jobs away from those in the "developed world"?  

5) If we look at the US services economy, it's interesting to note that "...the latest U.S. government data suggest that foreigners outsource far more office work to the U.S. than American companies send abroad."  

...The value of U.S. exports of legal work, computer programming, telecommunications, banking, engineering, management consulting and other private services jumped to $131.01 billion in 2003, up $8.42 billion from the previous year, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

Imports of such private services -- a category that encompasses U.S. outsourcing of call centers and data entry to developing nations, among other things -- hit $77.38 billion for the year, up $7.94 billion from 2002. Measuring imports against exports, the U.S. posted a $53.64 billion surplus last year in trade in private services with the rest of the world.  ... [WSJ.com  subscription required]

Those are just some of the bases on which this is a mis-guided crusade (and I use THAT term advisedly).

On both an emotional and economic basis, I find myself in complete sympathy with the op-ed piece written by Thomas Friedman that appears in yesterday's New York Times.

...

Indeed, it is worth asking what are the spawning grounds for [Infosys of India and Al Qaeda]. Infosys was spawned in India, a country with few natural resources and a terrible climate. But India has a free market, a flawed but functioning democracy and a culture that prizes education, science and rationality, where women are empowered. The Indian spawning ground rewards anyone with a good idea, which is why the richest man in India is a Muslim software innovator, Azim Premji, the thoughtful chairman of Wipro.

Al Qaeda was spawned in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, societies where there was no democracy and where fundamentalists have often suffocated women and intellectuals who crave science, free thinking and rationality. Indeed, all three countries produced strains of Al Qaeda, despite Pakistan's having received billions in U.S. aid and Saudi Arabia's having earned billions from oil. But without a context encouraging freedom of thought, women's empowerment and innovation, neither society can tap and nurture its people's creative potential — so their biggest emotional export today is anger.

...

Both Infosys and Al Qaeda challenge America: Infosys by competing for U.S. jobs through outsourcing, and Al Qaeda by threatening U.S. lives through terrorism. As Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign policy professor, put it: "Our next election will be about these two challenges — with the Republicans focused on how we respond to Al Qaeda, and the losers from globalization, and the Democrats focused on how we respond to Infosys, and the winners from globalization."

The "threat" of job "emigration" to India, Bulgaria or Ghana is wrong-think.  In point of fact, this is little more than the adjustment that always occurs when market players change, the means of production change, or the means of product/service delivery change.

[WSJ.com  subscription required]

[New York Times online]

This announcement, which I found posted in WebServices.Org, is very important as a leading indicator. 

Not only does it validate to the model of a third-party, hosted web services business model, it provides the (at times, questionable) credibility of AT&T.  A company like Thomson Financial might be conservative in its choice of service providers -- electing to use a "brand" like AT&T rather than an upstart managed web services provider -- , but their endorsement of web services for serious information service delivery indicates to me that the model established by Grand Central is on target.

AT&T WebService Connect is a comprehensive solution that delivers a fully secure, managed platform for businesses to share their critical services and information with partners and customers to drive additional revenue and efficiencies in their businesses. Because the service is based on open standards, companies can easily and securely share information, regardless of the diverse systems and applications used by their suppliers and customers.

...

Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, is one of the first customers of the new AT&T service. "Thomson Financial is all about delivering competitive advantage to its customers through its information and applications," said Jeff Scott, chief information officer, Thomson Financial. "Using AT&T WebService Connect, we will be able to deliver even greater value because this open, standards-based platform puts our customers in the driver's seat. They can use our services and applications on demand--in the format and on the systems of their choice."

from [WebServices.Org]

For those who need the whole, unvarnished NPRM, here's where to go.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has initiated a major proceeding to examine opportunities that allow consumers greater choices created by voice services provided over the Internet. It is also designed to provide a measure of regulatory stability to the communications marketplace and to further promote the development of these Internet-based services.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice) (pdf) recognizes not only that Internet services should continue to be subject to minimal regulation, but also that mechanisms to implement important social objectives, such as public safety, emergency 911, law enforcement access, consumer protections and disability access, may change as communications migrate to Internet-enabled services. [see FCC Press Release]

Phil Windley points to CSO Magazine's article on a sea change in the perspectives on security. 

CSO Magazine declares that the castle-and-moat era of information security is over. Acknowledging that this trend is not going to reverse itself, the article asks "But what defensive model comes next for information security if the perimeter goes away?"

I echo Doug Kaye's congratulations and thanks to Eric Newcomer for a very helpful book.

Eric Newcomer's best-selling Understanding Web Servicesis the recipient of the 2003 Web Services Journal/XML-Journal Readers' Choice Award for Best Web Services Book. The Web Services Journal/XML-Journal Readers' Choice Awards program has become one of the most respected industry competitions of its kind, and is referred to informally as the "Oscars of the software industry". All Readers' Choice Award recipients are selected through reader-submitted nominations, followed by online voting. The polls for the 2003 awards were open for just under a year, from March 1, 2003 to December 31, 2003, during which time more than 15,000 votes were cast. [Business Wire]

Congratulations, Eric. Understanding Web Serviceswas more help to my learning about web services than any other book.

Peter Winer at RFID: Radio Frequency Blog notes the arrival of ConnecTerra's RFTagAware server:

ConnecTerra announced availability of their new RFTagAwareserver.  ConnecTerra has built on their legacy of offering adapters for managing devices at the edge of the network including RFID readers.

RFTagAware solves the problem of managing large sets of readers from multiple manufacturers and it also filters and aggregates data from readers.  ConnecTerra's RFTagAware server generates Application Level Events (ALE) that can be easily consumed by enterprise applications upstream.

eWeek Technology News provides an interesting point of view on the acquisition last week of TruLogica by HP.  They note that HP is lagging behind the likes of  IBM, Novell and CA with respect to identity management products incorporated in a broad product line.  They then point out why TruLogica may offer differentiation and create a better fit with the company's existing OpenView product line:

TruLogica, based in Dallas, is known in the industry for taking an innovative approach to the problem of identity management and user provisioning. The company's flagship product, Concero, uses a customer's business as the model for granting user privileges and access rights, rather than relying on each user's role to define their identity. The system is designed to simplify and automate the provisioning process.

HP plans to integrate TruLogica's technology into its OpenView Select Access product, company officials said. The company was intrigued by TruLogica's offerings because of their strong emphasis on self-service and automation, as well as support for a variety of industry standards, such as SPML (Service Provisioning Markup Language) and XML, among others.  ...

Techdirt posted a comment about McDonalds and their on-going engagement with WiFi.  This was in response to a C|Net news.com article that ruminates about McDonalds' WiFi efforts and pulls out a number of (by now) recognizable comments about Starbuck's financially successful implementation. 

Sort of a strange update on the whole McDonald's WiFi thing, as News.com(.com) has a long article basically saying McDonald's is still thinking about WiFi. Not sure why that's newsworthy by itself. They've been working on WiFi for a while, and once they announce which provider wins the deal (Cometa, Wayport or Toshiba) there will be a ton of coverage. The article does do a good job, however, laying out the questions about whether or not McDonald's should charge, and if so, how much. Of course, it seems pretty obvious. McDonald's claims their reason for offering WiFi is to attract more customers for the food - since customer numbers have been dwindling since people have apparently started caring (at least a little) about what they're eating on a daily basis and deciding that perhaps McDonald's doesn't meet their needs. ...

InformationWeek article on the use of ebXML in the automotive industry.  The premise of the article is that ebXML is the means by which the auto industry can move from conventional EDI to a less costly, more performant means of "collaborative business" based on ebXML.

The ebXML standard, established in 2001, provides a comprehensive set of specifications for conducting secure, reliable data exchange over the Internet. "The biggest motivation for going to a Web-based process is to contain costs," says Williams, one of 1,000 dealers in the United States and Canada that VW hopes to pull into its ebXML network. Porsche, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler's Mercedes have said they'll be ready to go live with ebXML by this summer, according to Williams. When that happens, he estimates his $12,000 data-communications bill--spent each month on point-to-point EDI and satellite services--could drop by as much as $6,000. ...

Support for ebXML is growing throughout the automobile industry. The Covisint online exchange and parts supplier Delphi Corp. are among those backing ebXML, and Ford Motor Co. has said it wants the industry to ensure compatibility between ebXML and other Web-services technologies.  

Then, as what appears as almost a parenthetical comment, we have

Work remains to be done to align ebXML with other Web-services standards, which include Soap, WSDL, and UDDI. Ford and GM last week requested, and the Automotive Industry Action Group agreed, to form a working group to do just that.

This gets a nomination for the understatement of the week.    To the degree that business communities like the auto industry adopt technologies like ebXML, without VERY early and significant attention to what seem to be the "mainstream" of web services "standards", they will repeat their histories of EDI.

Thanks to RFID Log for pointing out this rather extensive article in CIO.  While a lot of it is a repeat of much of the trade press "explanation" of RFID, the article is worth reading to get the thoughtful perspectives Meridith Levinson has extracted from CIOs and CTOs.  I particularly liked this one from Kathleen Starkoff of Limited Brands:

Limited Brands CTO and group vice president Starkoff believes the influx of data that RFID will generate will force CIOs to rethink their data warehousing strategies, much as she’s doing at her company. CIOs will have to get smarter about what they store and how they store it. They’ll have to measure the data’s ROI and decide what should be trashed and what should be saved based on the data’s age and the cost of storing and retrieving it. “We’ll get rid of some data that we’ve been storing that maybe doesn’t have the return,” says Starkoff.

...Starkoff also thinks that CIOs may find relief from the data glut through software being developed by Manhattan Associates, SAP and other vendors that collects the reader data and turns it into clear and concise messages that say that the shipment is as it should be or that there is an exception to the order.

...“If you deploy RFID technology without thinking it through and without optimizing your infrastructure, you can see where the ROI would just dissipate,” she says. So, to minimize her investment and mitigate the impact of all this RFID data on Limited Brands’ infrastructure, she’s trying to figure out what information needs to be transmitted in real time and what can wait 24 hours for a batch update. Right now, she believes inventory and replenishment information will be most valuable in real time. “When RFID moves beyond the supply chain and onto the sales floor, real-time RFID information could make for a dynamic, sales-driven replenishment system,” she says.

...

C|Net's news.com has posted a Forrester commentary on RFID.  The message is that, in the early stages of RFID implementation, it behooves all the players to reduce complexity and establish cooperative relationships in order to prevent all parties from repeating (and therefore wasting) the efforts required for such efforts as defining rules for tag locations based on testing in representative environments.  The three big messages are:

• Define rules for where to tag a case
• Deliver source-tagging infrastructure
• Provide better interfaces between readers and applications

•  Provide better interfaces between readers and applications. Right now, suppliers need an additional layer of RFID middleware--from vendors like OATSystems, Savi Technology and ConnecTerra--to get the right data from readers and into applications like warehouse management. The drawback: added expense and integration overhead for overtaxed RFID compliance teams.

To buffer companies from this complexity, middleware vendors must first provide simple interfaces to allow administrators to program readers and then accelerate plans to bundle their software with back-end applications or integration products from companies like Tibco Software and WebMethods.

Pulver.com points us to the FCC's VoIP "wish list"....

Yesterday the FCC released the VoIP NPRM...all 96 pages worth! (in a 6.9MB pdf).  I'm still reviewing the document and look forward to being amongst the people who file reply comments and engage in dialog which will help shape the...

How about the quadruple play? How about the "2 times triple play" of broadband voice, video and data via cable in conjunction with voice, video and data by "wireless broadband"?

The lines keep blurring. While everyone in the cable and telecom business keeps talking up the "triple play" aspect of trying to offer "voice, video and data," the voice part is almost always landlines. For the cable providers, it's been the push towards a VoIP offering - but Time Warner Cable is now saying that maybe they'll enter the mobile phone business instead. It seems like just random speculation at this point, as they don't expect to invest much in the area, but it seems like the perfect target for some sort of MVNO offering, where they just partner with an existing mobile carrier and slap the Time Warner brand on it.

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking public comment on the key question of how to treat Internet phone calls that reach traditional phones.

...

The guidelines, released Wednesday, consist mainly of a list of questions on which the FCC is seeking public comment. The FCC has already ruled that phone calls that never touch the public switched telephone network, so-called pure voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), should not be regulated.

[CNET News.com]

To the point I made recently in a post regarding the importance and disruptive technological implications of inexpensive, active RFID tags... EPC Class 3 tags. 

The RFID division of Mannings, a company located in Southport, Merseyside, England, has launched a new system of RFID tags and readers that can monitor machines used in industrial and manufacturing plants.

...

Both tag models come with a temperature sensor, a battery, a battery-level sensor and a flash memory card that enables the configuration of the tag�s frequency and data transmission rate. The memory card also records the tag�s alarms settings for sending out alerts whenever a particular event happens. Battery life can last up to 10 years, depending on the signal and input frequency. The tags can also be wired to power source.

Each aTAG tag is identified by a unique algorithm that lets an aTAG reader pinpoint the tag�s location and, if the tag is moving, its direction of movement. The tag can by connected to temperature transducers, flow meters, pressure monitors, gas analyzers or other instruments that use 4 to 20 milliamp analog or digital I/O outputs. Once the reader receives the data transmitted by the tag, the data can be relayed to a PC or plant monitoring system using a standard RS232 cable.

A report on one group's take on why the 1/1/05 deadline is not going to be met.  The reasons cited include the lack of complementarity and compatibility between the EPCglobal and the ISO standards, as well as the delay in getting the Class 1, Version 2 RFID tag specification.  I believe that these two reasons do not stop the top 100 Wal-Mart suppliers from implementing minimally compliant solutions on the back of EPCglobal and the current "gen 1" tags.  Most of these companies are planning on the almost complete replacement of anything that gets built this year within 16 to 18 months.

RFID races to meet deployment deadline Network World Fusion reports on a recent seminar hosted by Craig K. Harmon of the Identification Vendor Advocacy Group. Mr. Harmon is not confident suppliers will be able to meet Wal-Mart deadlines.  ...

It was bound to happen:  with the cost of WiFi chips dropping through the floor, someone would figure out how to hack 802.11x in order to provide a means of low-power, reasonable accuracy location (position) determination in an enterprise by using WLAN equipment.  

NSC Wi-Fi tags are palm-sized Wi-Fi radios intended for use iwth Wi-Fi based location tracking sotware applications.  These small units are designed to send out Wi-Fi data compatible with award winning Ekahau Positioning Engine, and to be placed on an object that needs to be tracked using this application software.

[RFID News]

It's an interesting comment on (a) the pentup demand for web services and (b) the security "hurdle" which is preventing wider deployment of web services in enterprise situations.  Teros, security device manufacturer, is entering the market for web services security.  Note the second paragraph of this snippet ...

The privately held company is hoping to boost its HTML-based applications security business and grab a piece of the growing XML-based Web services security market with a single device. Meanwhile, Teros is also hoping to attract chief technology officers who are looking to consolidate their security equipment and vendors.

"Two-thirds of our enterprise customers have also approached us about providing protection for their Web services," said Greg Smith, senior director of product marketing with Teros. "And there is one clear dynamic that is happening. CIOs want to consolidate the number of devices and vendors they are using."

[CNET News.com - Front Door]

Steve Vinoski, who's recently started his blog, has a reputation in the web services community as a fine thinker.   He's posted for download a paper on some of the most recent "hot topics" in web services / SOA: ws-addressing, ws-events and ws-eventing.

My latest IEEE Internet Computing "Toward Integration" column, entitled "Web Services Notifications," which Werner recently alluded to in his blog entry on the same topic, has now been published. You can either get the PDF from the IC website, or get my version of the PDF from my home page. This column compares, contrasts, and discusses WS-Addressing, WS-Events, and WS-Eventing. Despite the title of the column, it was written before WS-Notification was announced (maybe I'll cover that one in a future column). Overall, I think they're decent specs, but that shouldn't be too surprising given that we should be well past the stage of needing to reinvent the wheel in the events/notification space. As always, comments and feedback welcome....

Notable in this announcement is the recognition that Voice over WLAN is, by itself, about as open to eavesdropping as the 4-customer partyline telephone I remember as a kid in rural Colorado.  It's important that the VoWLAN systems be well equipped with security, preferably something that provides for general data security as well as protection against various denial of service attacks.

The enhancements support voice provision over wireless protocols 802.11a, b and g, and provide security comparable to that of a wired environment, according to the company.

Simon Wilson, wireless LAN expert at Nortel, told vnunet.com: "Wireless has had a really bad reputation for security. Wired Equivalent Privacy was seen as being easy to crack and so I.T. managers have been unwilling to run their voice calls over wireless LAN."

...

Phil Windley has a good post on WS-Notification.  He points to good articles at Webservices.org and at IBM.

WS-Notification is a Publish/Subscribe notification framework for Web services. An article at WebServices.org describes WS-Notificationas "a family of related white papers and specifications that define a standard Web services approach to notification using a topic-based publish/subscribe pattern." 

[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog]

In an interesting development, it appears that Germany is going to be one of the first countries to really put a national computing grid in place, based on the Globus toolkits and standards of the Global Grid Forum (GGF).   Given its charter, to support research communities primarily, it's reminiscent of the ARPAnet of the early 70's.

The German government's project involves universities, research institutes and commercial companies. It is one of several grid-related initiatives that involve combining the computing capacity of servers in universities.

Companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard and Oracle are investing in grid software and standards to make grid computing commercially viable and to increase sales of server hardware, related software and consulting services.

IBM said that it will be contributing to the D-Grid project with technical expertise and personnel. The project does not involve the sale of IBM hardware, according to a company representative.

D-Grid will use software from the Global Grid Forum and closely follow the standards put out by the group, according to the German government. The Global Grid Forum's Globus toolkit, which is open-source software, is used to coordinate the processing power of a disparate network of computers and parcel out tasks across several machines.

....

[CNET News.com - Front Door]