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MyGlobalCity - Thur Feb 22, 2007 February 22, 2007

Get Out and Vote!Or at least in Estonia, stay in and vote over the Internet using your chip-embedded national ID card. Officials in that country are expecting 20-40,000 people to do so, out of the nearly one million eligible voters.

WiMax for ChileIntel’s WiMax wireless networking protocol is being deployed in Chile by Alcatel-Lucent, who will build networks for corporate and residential customers in 24 major cities. [Cellular News]

VoIP: Back… in the UAE?VoIP users in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) have been unhappy about the ban imposed on specific VoIP providers. However, recent news suggests that two native …

British Big Brother: He Knows When You’ve Been Good Or Bad November 5, 2006

So be good for goodness sake… The year 1984 was a symbolic date that had everything to do with George Orwell’s 1949 novel of the same name. But Big Brother surveillance societies already are here, have been here, and will continue to be here. We’ve let it happen.

And it’s not just China, a country that actually wants all of their bloggers to register with the government, as if they were some sort of diseased creature harmful to the populace. (Websites there already have to be registered, legally speaking.) Privacy International, a civil liberties watchdog group, …

The Virtual Global Office Using Skype/ VoIP July 16, 2006

It occurred to me earlier today, while nibbling on a snack, that my entire freelancing business exists primarily in cyberspace. I do everything here. Well, almost. I’m reminded of a pseudo-documentary film shot in Vancouver, B.C., Canada (possibly called Downtown). It documents a collection of office workers who make a bet about who can stay “inside” downtown Vancouver’s interconnected office buildings without stepping foot outside into fresh air. That’s kind of what’s happened to me, except in cyberspace. And that’s because it’s become that easy to run a business entirely online.

Sure, I still I outside to get groceries and sometimes …

Verbdate + Skype: Online Dating Gets Audio VoIP Chatting July 10, 2006

Dating services have been predominantly around since the late 80s, when workaholism probably first started rearing its ugly head. First there were the match-making services, then introduction services via telephone - often advertised in the back of city weekly newspapers. Then came the online services. All of which cost heavily in terms of membership or intro fees. Then came Canadian Markus Frind’s site, Plenty of Fish, which is free but generates revenue to the tune of US$10,000/d by placing Google Adsense ads on the pages. Now there’s an even newer Canadian dating site, Verbdate, which takes the global village application …

Hometown Transit Employs GPS And Cameras June 24, 2006

After a spate of attacks against bus drivers in recent years, the one-time very quiet town I grew up in has decided to install cameras on board buses for the safety of both drivers and passengers. Local transit is also testing GPS technology to offer citizens the ability to find out when a bus will arrive at their stop - by phoning in or checking a website.

I’ve talked about my town’s sucky bus service. They once had a system to call in and find out when the next bus would arrive. But it was an approximation and ultimately became useless …

Travel Agency VoIP Applications June 14, 2006

Consider: You’re planning a trip to Europe and you’re going to be joined there by a friend who will be travelling through Asia ahead of you. How do you sync up with each other without paying exorbitant cell phone or satellite phone costs?

Why, through VoIP and/or Skype, of course. Imagine being able to connect up directly with your friend through your VoIP-enabled phone, right from the travel agency. If you can touch base with your travelling friend, it makes it so much easier to make last-minute travel plans - something that’s still possible with regular mobile phones, but …

Roll Your Own VoIP Service June 13, 2006

Want to be a VoIP provider and achieve fame, fortune and fast cars? Well, maybe not all of that. But if you’re interested in joining what will probably a group of thousands of small- to medium-sized VoIP providers the world over, SkyVoIP will give you the necessary equipment for $499.95/m, plus a few other charges.

US calls are only 2 cents/minute. You have to have 786 DIDs ($5 each), but you can also pay $10 for other area codes. The monthly rate includes 100 extensions, and you can set up your own minute plans for customers, and determine …

Municipal Wi-Fi Setbacks - MobilePro Quits Sacramento Project June 10, 2006

Apparently the city of Sacramento wants to set up a public free Wi-Fi network whose cost is completely supported by advertising. The project was only at the RFP (Request For Proposal) stage and MobilePro, who won the bid to work on it, did not think the city’s demand was feasible. MobilePro is still involved in other municipal Wi-Fi projects around the US.

Other municipalities have been questioning whether municipal Wi-Fi (that is, free) is financially feasible, or whether they should just stick to regular (paid) city-wide Wi-Fi networks. MobilePro’s view suggests that since such networks cannot be fully advertising-supported, …

VoIP Summaries - Tues Jun-06-2006 June 6, 2006

Here are some VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) news summaries for Tues, Jun 6, 2006: VoIP is spreading in terms of the number of countries using it or planning to.

Unwired - News About GPS, Wi-Fi, RFID, Bluetooth - Jun-01-2006 June 1, 2006

Here are some summaries related to wireless technologies (GPS, Wi-Fi, RFID, Bluetooth) for Jun 1, 2006:

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