In her recent post on how to improve your customers' s experience during those harsh times such as the ones we're entering, Patty Seybold explains the different ways to use Web 2.0 tools to keep in touch and even reinforce the relationships with them.
Here's what Patty writes :
If you are forced to throttle back and/or delay customer-critical IT projects right now, consider some much lower-cost actions you could take. Each of these can be done by a relatively non-technical person and set up in a matter of minutes!
1. Adopt Web 2.0 “pay as you go” cloud-hosted applets rather than large monolithic internal ERP applications.
2. Develop interactive gadgets and widgets to deliver up-to-date interactive functionality and information via your Web site(s) and portals.
3. Use SMS, twitter, and instant messaging to communicate with customers.
4. Use Wikis and shared collaborative spaces to coordinate across organizational boundaries.
5. Encourage customers to take polls, contribute content, photos, videos, tags, and reviews to make your company's Web site more compelling and to help customers make buying decisions easily. (Hint: you can use third-party widgets to do many of these things.)
Keep in mind what Peter Drucker said : this is the customer who defines your business. He wrote that in the early 70's. Now that we have Web 2.0 apps & tools at our service, it would be a great mistake not to leverage on it.
If everything goes well, FiberGeneration (hence Testing 2.0, by the way) will start its new life as a startup on December 1st - this year. Here's why (by Paul Graham of seed investment firm Y Combinators). With traders still living in their own crazy world, no doubt the overall situation is set to be even tougher for entrepreneurs. That's what makes entrepreneurship fun.
Yesterday, I've spent 3 hours only at the Paris Auto Show. My focus : the "green" cars. No deception : Hybrids, electric, and hydrogen prototypes, pre-production units, and production cars were all over the place. See my Flickr set for a brief overview.
Among several really interesting machines and concept cars,
the Solo 2008 imagined by the Hungarian Antro Group is the one which
kept my attention. Not only because of its exterior and interior designs, which both are eye-catching: the overall concept of the project seems to be drafted from scratch, as true breakthrough innovations always are.
" Goal of Antro Kht.: as a non-profit organization, developing and
working out alternative vehicle and resource concepts as well as
innovations, taking part in creating prototypes. Objective of the ANTRO Group:
shaping a future that concentrates on humans
satisfying the needs of conscious shoppers
developing new car and vehicle alternatives
inspiring community cooperation
applying innovative materials and technologies
creating a variable vehicle family "
That's from Hungary, folks. Not Silicon Valley or France (I have quite some doubts such an initiative would be possible here, for French generally dislike open non-profit ideas).
Antro is going to open its capital to private investors soon, is looking for distribution partners, and is accepting registration for pre-orders.
Of course, I discussed a while with the booth attendants. A young and shy Hungarian guy, who doesn't speak french at all (I imagine his nightmare on the week-ends at the show, when Mr. & Ms. Dupond of Aubervilliers - or any other place in France, no offense folks - stop by his booth), and a pretty nice Hungarian woman, speaking english and french like me. Both smiling and engaging, which is rare in such crazy environment such a crowdy day.
For sure, I didn't get her business card, but Antro' s managing director' s : Zsolt Magyar. Google this name, and you'll find this Zsolt Magyar. Can a "Hungarian born, Los Angeles based Production Sound Mixer with more than 7 years of experience" (imdb.com dixit) be also the lead economist at a green tech startup based in his mother country ? Why not. I'll find out this soon, as I'll get in touch with Antro for some sort of new venture I have in mind for the Pau Broadband Country.
Anyway, the actual team is impressive, although I'm definitely not familiar with Hungary and its ecosystem. At first sight, it proves the project to be really serious.
Now, why this free ad for an unknown startup in an unknown country ? Because of the Antro' s booth at the Paris Auto Show is made of... carton. Carton, wood, rope, linen fabric. Amazing. They've pushed the concept of sustainable development to the overall product marketing process. That's the clever thing. I never saw a exhibit in carton before. That's why I think those guys got it right. They understand the true meaning of being green. For them, "Green" is not just a marketing gimmik to gain customers 's attention. It's their philosophy.
See it by yourselves :
the door of the cabinet
behind the desk
the information panels, right on the floor
even the flat display is made of carton - no, that's a joke
Now you get it too, right ? So, next time you do think about being green, think Solo 2008.
There's no better time to launch a startup than a big crisis such as the one we're heading to. Actually, I recently remembered that I've launched XWinG right after the downturn in 1993. Within the next 2 years, we were number one on the market. The key is : Bootstrapping. Less is more. Customer-centric.
Okay, fast forward to tomorrow : I'm happy to announce that FiberGeneration will be become a company on December 1 (this year ;-). Headquarter : Helioparc technoparc, Pau, France. Business : help people to better understand and use Web 2.0 apps & tools.
Of course, Fiber-To-The-Home and Sustainable Development will be part of the game...
I've just learned that french fiber optics expert Alain Oudet passed away last sunday. Alain was well-known and highly respected in the french optical communications industry. Together with Regis Trouart and Patrick Desprez, Alain started TDO (Trouart Desprez Oudet), the very first fiber optics training company in the country, back in 1986. In the early 90's, TDO, AMP (now Tyco) and Alcatel (now AlcatelLucent) launched Le Club Optique, a counter-initiative to the famous CREDO created by the cable manufacturer Acome and hardware maker Pouyet (now 3M Telecoms).
Alain and myself never been real "buddies". First of all, I wasn't part of his "inner-circle". Then, we've been pure rivals when I run my own firm, XWinG. Provided that in 1995, after 2 years of operation only, XWinG was taking over the installed base of TDO, thanks to a nice WOM marketing. Last, Regis Trouart joined me as associate in 1994 : it didn't help improving our relationships at all...
In 1997, we were #1 on the market. That pushed TDO to move to another business : fiber networks expertise. Alain quickly became a master of OTDR and dispersions measurements, gaining a pretty strong reputation on the fiber characterization services business in France and other parts of Europe.
As I joined HP/Agilent as a regular employee mid '98, I lost contact with Alain and TDO. When I came back to the french marketplace two years ago, Alain was still the same : smiling, engaging, and... smoking.
I don't know what TDO is going to become now that its leader is gone. Not my business, after all (actually, not exactly true : I'm in the fiber optics training business too. But I don't consider TDO as a rival any longer : we're not on the same page, simple as that). I just know why I haven't met Alain in the alleys of Odebit or the Telecoms Forum in Paris last week.
For the rest of us who were not born with an embedded calculator and did not graduate to an MBA, here's THE video that explains the reason why the World is going right into deep sh*t. Watch and listen to "Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch [who] gives
a bubbly explanation of the intricacies of collateralized debt
obligations those financial instruments that got us into this financial
mess".
Since a few days, I've got the furious impression that the actual crisis is repeating the very same patterns than the Dotcom' crash *. When I saw the description of the CDOcollateralized debt obligations loop, I saw the very same problem than the one we in the Telecoms/IT industry suffered back in 1998-2000, during the first Bubble : the guys who make the big money are totally disconnected from the guys who are supposed to pay. At this time, the whole Telecoms industry was B2B. Remember Telecom'99 in Geneva ? 90% of the exhibitors were there to exhibit their stuff (prototypes, commercial products, booth hostesses) to the other exhibitors. You and me as the real end-user/consumer ? Nowhere to see.
Heck, I've no MBA, but I think I understand the fundamentals of business. Peter Drucker describes the process dead simple (diagram from DeltaNet) :
The fact is, once you insert an intermediate party between you and the customer, you screw up the whole stuff. That's exactly what happened with the Dotcom Bubble, wherein every startup was trying to reach you and me with no clue on how do it, whilst every established firm was selling its products roadmap to other established firms with even-greater products roadmap. Anecdote (may I disappear right away from my captain chair if I lie here) : back in november 2000, I heard of a potential deal of 1 billion USD between Nortel and Agilent Technologies. 1 billion USD. For a company (Agilent Technologies) who did $11B for its first year of existence.
The actual turmoil has been caused by the very same defective link with the customer - read : the house' s owner. Watch the video :
Thanks to Garr Reynolds of PresentationZen for the heads up. By the way, why such a video on a blog which aims at everything "presentation" ? Simply because this explanation of a very complex process is made very simple. Mr Hirsch proves that once you master your topic, you don't need Powerpoint. Give me a paperboard, and I'll explain you Fiber Optics ;-)
*post-scriptum : I'm still looking for any information, link, contact name, whatever, on this french researcher who published a study back in september 2003, on the fractals applied to Economy. Back then, the guy simply announced the crisis we're enjoying (joke) today, saying that the downturn is going to be harder and longer than the one we've seen in 2000.
What need for good stay on the new location? Neighbors! There is a good neighbour here. Nice woman. Danuta. Polish woman, living in Vilnius. Sometimes, she invites me for dinner, like today. :o)
[updated 10/7/08 4:36PM CET] See this 1Gbit/s trial in Amsterdam ? Imagine the same type of apps (3D-HDTV for instance), right at the size of your district. A true field trial. That's what the Pau Greater Area and its Pau Broadband Country FTTH platform can offer to you Next Gen Apps vendors and to you Heavy Bandwidth Consumers. Plus, Pau is a bit south of Amsterdam, which makes it a slightly better place for work and fun - as long as you prefer sports & nature lifestyle rather than nightlife in a city that never sleeps ;-) If I were a NGA vendor, I would do the testing in Pau and the implementation in Amsterdam...
Here are some screenshots of my iPhone 3G : the 6 pages of the Home Screen - as of today, since the actual number grows as fast as the Stock Market plummets -, plus several of my favorite apps.
You'll see : Obama'08 (which I use both for personal interests and professional ones), James Bond' "Quantum Of Solace" (I swear : for business purposes only, although I really love the James Bond' franchise since Pierce Brosnan took over the role), Air Sharing (great app for presenters, should there be a WiFi hotspot available), Twinkle (much better than Twitterrific, actually), GoogleReader (as long as Feedly won't run on the iPhone ;-), LiveRadio (by Orange), and WhereTo (I like the GUI, pretty close to what I'd like to implement on iPhone-based FTTH Testing instruments...).
Of course, I'm talking about sex here. Weird : this blog got a hit from a search result made from a website that is definitely not about Fiber Optics, iPhone, Broadband, or whatever Vilnius thing.
The query ? "Wild Wide". It appears that the tags my friend Andrew uses for his posts are "Wild Wide West" and "Wild Wild West".
Now I see which kind of application would become the famous long-expected "Killer App" on FTTH networks ;-)
Absolutely marvelous. See here by yourself. Thanks to the folks at Digg for this fantastic app.
Once you're in the Digg' s Labs site, you may want to play as well with Stack, BigSpy, Arc, and Pics. Better go there during lunch break or at night, otherwise your day will be screwed ;-)
Since quite a while, I'm moving my "online sharing" activities to more comments on others' s blogs and more twitts than ever before. Hence the relative silence here on FiberGeneration. Actually, I'm investigating several ways to post those comments and twitts on this blog, should they be relevant with FiberGeneration' s *editorial line*. An interesting yet difficult job ;-)
In the meantime, Andrew keeps posting his short notes as often as his own job allows it. Also, my friends Georges and Handy should publish their first posts within the next couple of weeks (I know, I said that 2 months ago about Georges ;-)
Keep going, Namaste, and Peace Out (I think we all need it at the moment...).
This is the photo of one newly renovated part of the CNIT exhibition & conference center down there in Paris-La Defense. Look at the stairways : the escalators stop at mid-level. Very easy for people carrying heavy loads (joke)...
This morning at the Ultra-Broadband Summit at the Odebit Conference in Paris, Mr Eric Besson, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, introduced the draft plan for Digital Economy by 2012 - read the full text here (link in french).
The one thing that will change the game : France is going aerial cabling. Mr Besson cited Japan and South Korea as the most advanced countries for FTTH, emphasizing on the fact that those countries are deploying mostly aerial fiber. Also, Mr Besson cited USA, where 60% of the fiber cables are aerial. Last, Mr Besson said that aerial cabling reduces the cost of deployment by a factor of 2.
That is the best news I've heard from a member of the French Government since years. Finally, we are to join the "smart club" : aerial cabling is faster, easier, and cheaper than any other solution - buried, ducts...
The french cable manufacturer Acome has developed a solution for fiber deployment along low-voltage power lines which do inverse the traditional ratio Civil Engineering vs. The Rest (i.e. cables, hardware, network equipments, install, etc.) : 20/80 against 80/20 traditionally. Let's work on the 80%, by reducing some costs, such as hardware and/or commissioning for instance, and we will reach an even more attractive solution.
We have now the opportunity to develop truly innovative ways to deploy fiber to everyone faster and cheaper. That is a challenge I hope we at the Pau Broadband Country will be able to help solving.
On Tuesday, the Grenelle du Très Haut Débit will be held in Paris, during the fast-growing Odebit tradeshow & conference event.
I'll attend, on behalf of my boss Jean-Pierre Jambes of the Pau Greater Area. Being a rep of the Pau Broadband Country is a fantastic honor to me, since I've started my career 25 years ago hearing people claiming that Fiber To The Home was the Future. The Future is now, and it takes place as well in Pau.
If you're looking for a city where you can help changing the World thanks to Broadband, don't hesitate to stop by.
I will be attending ECOC'08 tomorrow Monday at the Brussels Expo exhibition center.
Shall you be in town as well, please feel free to stop by the eXperide booth, where I'll be demonstrating how the Web 2.0 changes the way we do business.
Speaking of Web 2.0 : due to the tight schedule, I won't be able to make a complete report of the show. However, if WiFi and/or 3G works in Brussels Expo, I'll post short notes from both Twitter and Typepad for iPhone.
Mister JMB * himself, at the Pau-Pyrénées airport.
* [update 09/20] Jean-Michel Billaut, the man who is at the origin of the PBC Pau Broadband Country network. Born in 2003 and operational since 2005, PBC is still the largest FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home network here in France, with 42,000+ houses passed (15,000 under construction over the next 30 months) and 8,000 active subscribers to date. The adoption cycle seems to be accelerating with a growth rate of 22 new subscribers a day - that is 30 more per week than last spring. The only limitation factor : there's not enough OSP technicians to make the job (hence the need for a "local" training facility, by the way...).
I come to Vilnius today. And observed - there are air balloons above city. First, second... dozen or more! Amazing view. It were rised up and up! I looked with palpitating heart... Well, I did not skydive more than week!
I'm typing this post on my iPhone 3G, whilst enjoying a delicious tartare at the "Berry", one of my favorite restaurants here in Pau. Connected to the Net via 3G, of course.
The last couple of days have been quite busy, as my boss Jean-Pierre Jambes and I are preparing a series of strategic events over the next two weeks.
Among those events, there's the presentation on Thursday of the "FTTH School" project that we've been working on since last winter. Shall the Gods of Broadband here us, it's going to be a sort of World Premiere, with a pretty intensive use of ultra-broadband to deliver training courses and stuff.
The other event we're preparing : the Odebit'08 conference, to be held in Paris next week. I've been spending the afternoon creating and editing the Pau Broadband Country' presentation. A slideshow made with Keynote of course, made of photos and a video. And designed for... the iPhone : we won't use a laptop to run the slideshow on the booth, but an iPhone connected to the larger display with the wonderful Apple-made AV cable.
There's many more than one thing to share with you : how I recently boosted my network and started some really intersting experience sharing thanks to Linkedin' a Discussions feature; or how I know twitt more than ever, thanks to the iPhone 3G and Twitterific.
But I have to stop writing, as the tartare is getting cold (joke ;-).
Whilst the french community is busy preparing the Grenelle du Très Haut Débit, where some members of the French Government will (hopefully) unveil its plans for fibering (hopefully) the country, others are working hard to make things real.
Congratulations and all the best to Geoff Daily, the organizer of this fantastic event for all of us evangelists of broadband, open neutral networks.
I've embedded the interview of Terry Huval, director of LUS Lafayette Utility Systems, by Geoff, for you to get a flavor of what's going on in the US those days.
Ed. note : I can't stop thinking about the situation if Napoleon didn't sold Louisiana to the US two hundred years ago. Maybe France would have been the true leader of the Broadband communities movement...
I personally have been calling for a FiberCamp since more than a year or so. Unfortunately, this country doesn't seem ready for the kind of * Community thinking * that's required for such a workshop.
Past and present days are very close here. Like this. Bank building and old house are close neighbors. "Old" do not mean bad condition, - cafes and night clubs there.
Now I found out faster way to Minsk. It's a 50 km more, but no need to wait 3 hours at the country' s border. Under way back, I saw 12 km(!) trucks line .
Suppose, some people forget car lines between the two countries. :-)
Earlier this week, YouTube added Close Caption to its features set. As lots of people around the planet, I've been waiting for it since months- not that I'm deaf myself (at least not according to my last check-up last June), but I like to think from the end-user side.
According to TechCrunch, "[this] will not only allow videos to appeal more directly to foreign
audiences, but will give YouTube excellent data for searching videos
and targeting ads to them."
Here at YouTube, we're always trying to find new ways to enrich your
viewing experience and to help video creators reach a wider audience.
As part of this goal, we've added a new captioning feature which allows
you to give viewers a deeper understanding of your video. Captions can
help people who would not otherwise understand the audio track to
follow along, especially those who speak other languages or who are
deaf and hard of hearing.
You can add captions to one of your videos
by uploading a closed caption file using the "Captions and Subtitles"
menu on the editing page. To add several captions to a video, simply
upload multiple files. If you want to include foreign subtitles in
multiple languages, upload a separate file for each language. There are
over 120 languages to choose from and you can add any title you want
for each caption. If a video includes captions, you can activate them
by clicking the menu button located on the bottom right of the video
player. Clicking this button will also allow viewers to choose which
captions they want to see.
Some of our partners have already started using captions to
offer you a better understanding of their videos (even with the audio
turned off):
We hope captions will serve to tighten the YouTube community by bringing together international users from different cultures.
We're excited to see what kinds of fun and creative uses for captions you'll be coming up with for your videos!
I read the TechCrunch article and the YouTube post twice : I haven't seen any mention of hearing impairment, whilst this Close Captioning system is the perfect tool to give access to videos to the deaf people, right ?
Then I googled "YouTube closed caption" (btw : I used Ubiquity for this : fast & easy): only three out of the ten sites on the first page are citing disabled people as the target users of this new feature. That's Media Bullseyes, CNet' Webware, and - no surprise, provided the name of the site : 4HearingLoss.
IMHO, that's really not much. Lucky Web 2.0 key players : they suffer no disease...
The beauty of Dipity is that you can display any type of content in a chronological order (Timeline view), on a carousel (Flipbook view), or on a map (Map view, surprisingly ;-). For teachers and instructors of all kind, what a nice tool to keep your audience up and running.
As any true Web 2.0 app, Dipity is UGC : User Generated Content. In this case, it means that teachers and instructors can call for help to create a better content - think Wikipedia.
Well, Dear FiberGeneration Readers, I'm therefore calling on you ! I'll continue to edit the current timeline, for instance adding the missing locations, photos, URLs, etc. What I'm asking you is to add relevant content. For instance, as you can see the timeline ends in 1996. As some of you may have notice, quite a few interesting events occured between then and now in the Optical Communications arena. Those are typically the things you can contribute to, shall you have the relevant experience, knowledge, or insight ;-) Major milestones, breakthrough technologies, interesting field trials : please feel free to add !
Just drop me a line at : marc[dot]duchesne[at]mac[dot]com, and i'll set you as editor for this History of Fiber Optics. Thank you.
post-scriptum : for those of you who are not familiar with Fiber Optics, Jeff is publishing the "Understanding Fiber Optics" series since almost two decades now. The fifth edition was released in 2005. It's available here at Amazon.com. Enjoy the ride !
Noted, many people speaks Russian here and children as well. But often, cafe and restaurant waiters do not understand Russian. In this cases English help me. And I know some Lithuanian words and phrases of politeness already. :-)
For example: - спасибо - acui - thank you; - привет - labas - hi; - школа - mokykla - school; - вода - vanduo - water; - пиво - alus - beer; - хватит - viskas - enough. When I hear "viskas" I think abour cats food. :-)
Since Day One, I'm a fervent user of Firefox 3.0. Fast, simple, flexible : to me, FX3 is more powerful than Safari 3, and easier to use than Opera 9.5.
Firefox is therefore my default browser on my Macs and the PC. Each of them with the same setup, thanks to the Web 2.0. My favorites extensions : Feedly for reading my RSS feeds, Yoono for sharing stuff for myself between my computers, and to share things with the World too, and Piclens for pics & vids browsing and viewing.
Yesterday, the Mozilla Labs introduced a new add-on : Ubiquity. Read the description, watch the video, and install the first release. You'll discover a brand new way to deal with the Web. Absolutely stunning. Ubiquity might be the Web 3.0 (no typo ;-) for the rest of us.
On the fourth week of September, I'm going to attend three different events in three days. ECOC'08 to start with, then Odebit'08, and finally the Cisco's CUD conference. That is Monday in Brussels, Tuesday in Paris, and Wednesday in Amsterdam.
Provided that I'll be either an exhibitor (ECOC), or a pro-active participant (Odebit), I have to be there for the opening - means way before the doors open. Also, I expect to leave the places not before 7:00PM each. So the question is : which travel mode is the best, for me to be on time in the morning in Brussels, then in Paris, then in Amsterdam ?
As I do my very best to be an honest Global Warming fighter, the first choice that comes to mind is the Thalys high-speed-train, obviously. At least for the first segment : home - Brussels - Paris, the Thalys seems to be the right solution.
Problem : I must travel low-cost to ECOC. Hence for me driving is cheaper and simplier. Just because I'm "only" 3-hours drive away from Brussels, all on motorways, whilst going by train would force me to 1) drive to the Disneyland Paris high-speed-train station 60 minutes away from home, 2) leave my car at the parking lot there, and pay for it, 3) jump in the train to Lille-Europe, and switch for the next one to Brussels-Midi, 4) grab a taxi to the hotel, and pay for it, 5) on the morning next day, pay the hotel room - a one-night stay in Brussels is not cheap, even in a 2-stars hotel - and 6) grab a taxi to the Exhibition center, and pay the guy. And the reverse in the evening on the way back to home : call a cab, catch the train, switch in Lille-Europe, drive home.
The train option : a 2-days trip, approximatively 350 euros all included but the meals. The car option : a 1-day trip, approx. 100 euros, gasoline & toll included. Therefore, the choice is easy. Car wins, unfortunately for the planet.
Now the trip to Amsterdam. Driving is not an option, so the question is : train or airplane ? Train : the last Thalys to Amsterdam departs from Paris at 6:25PM, meaning that I would have to leave the Broadband Summit at Odebit at something like 5:00PM. No way, since the wrap-up session will be held by a key member of the French Government. Therefore, option B wins : I'll fly from Paris to Amsterdam. I am so sorry, again, Mother Earth.
The conclusion is, you may be the most proactive proponent of the fight against climate changes (which I'm not. This guy is, for sure ;-), your agenda sometimes forces you to break the rules.
The lesson for me : it's time to compensate my carbon emissions. See my total CO2 footprint to date here on Dopplr. How much is yours ?
A New Yorker artist and scientist, Harris is leading an outstanding project : "We Feel Fine".
It's all about people' s feelings. Amazingly captivating. Just this little warning : it's so captivating that you may end up spending the whole day exploring the Web through Harris and his team' s eyes. Quite a nice way to forget the rude reality of the daily life at the office ;-)
The We Feel Fine website is here. The core stuff is there. Peace Out, Buddies.
Little by little I become familiar with banking. Internet banking, first of all. It is available to make all payments from home PC! There are a huge number of ATM's around. Though, sometimes these machines adds me a couple of gray hairs! "Windows"? :-))
As I am preparing the Back To The (Fiber) School season, which is going to start quite strongly in a couple of weeks, I am digging into my personal archives to put together some fancy tutorials on Technology and Markets trends.
Among a couple of interesting things that I've re-discovered, I found this slide - part of a 140-slides training binder that I've created back in 1992. It shows the theorical minimum attenuation of so-called "infra-red optical fibers. Take Fluoride fiber for instance : 0.001 dB/km kind of order of magnitude. A 100 times less (means : 100 times better) than the best of the best optical fibers currently manufactured for submarine systems (the Formula One of Optical Communications, that is).
This slide is 16-years old. Those magical fibers are still under the hood of some secret labs somewhere on the Planet (Corning might be one of those). Why ? My take is that this technology is such a fantastic leap frog (remember : attenuation 100 times better than the best fiber today) that its introduction will induce a complete revamp of the actual network design and construction methods. New cables, new splice boxes, new splicing process, new connectors, new test instruments. Plus, on top, new transmission systems. The whole supply chain to be changed.
For an industry which is just recovering from a quite heavy downturn period, such a paradigm shift is not yet welcome. Let's wait for the (almost) whole world to be Fiber-To-The-Home cabled, and then you'll see the first field trials popping up here and there (my take : US first ;-) to test those new fibers in some long-haul links.
Because when the World (almost) will be Fiber-To-The-Home cabled, the Optical Communications industry will need to create a new market to sustain its development. Considering that the actual long-haul/core networks infrastructures won't be able to carry the Internet traffic as it will be in 10 years - or even less - from now, new fibers are mandatory. If I had some money to spend on the Stock Market, I definitely would rate Corning as a "Buy"...
Now I know how to use parking in the Vilnius airport. :-) You approach to the barrier, press button, get ticket, the barrier is opened, go inside parking space and leave the car. Under way out you have to pay to automat by coins or bank notes, get marked ticket and go to the exit barrier, insert ticket to automat and you are free! :-)
Sometimes I watch TV for Lithuanian news on russian. Today, on the news headline I hear ..."Lithuanian government will make easy to get a Lithuanian residence permit"... wow... well... And I am waiting this news details. Yes, really. Lithuanian government will make easy to get a Lithuanian residence permit to whom, who are 65 years old and more! They will not take an examination for language... Heh.
Little by little I become to study a city and suburb. Couple of weeks ago I decided to visit near Vilnius dropzone for skydiving. I tryed to find it during 2 hours by car! And the back way took 20 minutes only! :-) My family came for vacation through Vilnius. I was a like a guide for them in city and Lithuanian kitchencooking. Lithuanian kitchen cooking is a separate theme. ;-)
I have got a bill from Vilnius electricity supplier for 1 (one) cent! Suppose, flat owner still owes it. I've imaged: paper, printing, envelop, postal fee... a hundred time more than 1 cent to inform me, that I owe 1 cent! :-)
A unique start-up of its kind, OptixSoft provides outsourced R&D services to the Fiber Optics Test & Measurement industry :
OptixSoft offers a full range of specialized software development services,
from GUI and custom utilities for equipment to embedded software
development for Windows CE and Linux, to firmware and device driver
development. Our main specialty is software development for
telecommunication industry, including embedded and low-level software
development for fiber optic transmission lines and fiber optic test and
measurement equipment.
In addition to
specialized system/low-level software development (firmware, embedded
software, drivers), Optixsoft also offers custom application software
development for desktop and pocket computers. Even the most robust and
feature-rich test and measurement instrumentation often requires
enhancements and customization, and additional application software
needs to be developed to support that. Often such software allows users
to work with files, display and organize data received from your test
and measurement equipment, and integrate with 3rd party solutions.
Custom application software development that we build for our clients includes:
intuitive user interfaces to manage existing processes and files,
data processing and data storing for 3rd party databases,
data analyzers and report generators,
distributed systems and packages.
To give you an idea of OptixSoft' s capabilities, CEO Mike Ziuzin developed a few years ago a project of his own : a *pocket-OTDR*, based on a micro test probe (the "OTDR" per se) and a Pocket-PC. WiFi, BlueTooth, and miniaturization : the right package for an FTTH Fiber-To-The-Home tester...
Alex Che, software expert, waits for your twitts here on Twitter
I visited IIT a few years ago. It was like if I were playing "Back To The Future" : those folks were using pretty aged equipments, things that we Frenchies got at the university back in the early 80's. And those guys were doing absolute jewels. Out of almost nothing, at least for someone like myself who has been working with the big T&M vendors such as HP/Agilent and NetTest for years.
Since this visit, I'm convinced that this team is capable of miracles. May The Force of the T&M be with them ;-)
Just 200 km from my Minsk home, but all around moves faster. But, at the same time, it all comes right and do not gives a trouble. And I feel a comfort. I've pointed, if Wednesday comes - it like an end of week! Time goes faster for me here. I'm trying to explain it, but all reasons I see are not completed.
I just received my iPhone 3G this morning. Setting up the whole thing was a matter of minutes, thanks to iTunes and... MobileMe, which worked quite well for once.
Now, the question is : what am I going to do with the "old" one ? Simple : I will use my 1st gen. iPhone as a portable device, for presentation and training events. Actually, it turns out that an iPhone without its SIM card is... an iPod Touch (with a camera ;-).
You can then use this 1st gen. iPhone to display photos and videos, listen to podcasts, etc. Connect it to a TV or a video projector, and boom, you get the ultimate presentation gear. Which you can even leave to your customer after the show *. Bonus : if you come close enough to a WiFi hotspot, you gain access to the Internet and all your favorite Web 2.0 apps...
That is the beauty with everything Infinite Loop : you never throw an Apple-branded device away. You can always recycle it for a different usage. I mean, not as Michael Arrington does with his Mac Mini...
* This is a wonderful sales trick I've learned at Agilent Technologies. Each time we were demoing our flagship product - the Mini-OTDR - to a new prospect, we were offering a free loan right on the spot : "we can leave it to you right now, so you can test it by yourself", and that was it. We knew this "try & buy" proposal was a killer.
It occured 8 months ago. I make call to Lithuania company director. Standard situation for the western man - phone call, resume posting and interview. I've heard «yes»! Wow, it is a new life is coming. Then: 4 month awaiting of work permission, preparing necessary documents for embassy, some stay in line and I had a workig visa. I have been in Vilnius much times before, but now I looked around in other eyes.
Dear FiberGeneration Readers : I have the very pleasure to introduce my friend Andrew Luzgin to you.
A Belarus native, Andrew recently moved to Lithuania for a new job. A 200-km-only trip, but a giant quantum leap for someone who lived in a typical former USSR type of country until his 40's.
Since a couple of months, Andrew is discovering a brand new world, both on the business and the private sides. That's why I've asked him to share his once-in-a-lifetime experience with you.
Today is Andrew' s first day as author on this blog. Please forgive his not-so-Oxford english, and enjoy his vision of life. I am convinced that you will learn a lot from Andrew, as I do since three years we are in touch almost every day.
Using a Mac since 24 years, living the all-Apple digital lifestyle at home, and the as-much-Apple-as-I-can at work, I consider myself as a pretty loyal customer to the Cupertino' s folks - to be honest, I'm a so-called "Mac-maniac", which is sometimes annoying for my co-workers and customers.
I'm also a very loyal admirer of Steve Jobs - some would say, I'm a "fan" of Master Steve. For instance, I moved to the NeXT Cube as soon as the black jewel was available here in France, just because it was "made by Steve".
I bought the iPhone the (second) day of its release in France, and I will get the iPhone 3G on Monday (thanks to Orange).
3 Macs at home, 3 iPods, and 2 iPhones soon : that's quite a nice package, I think.
Of course, I'm was a .Mac subscriber since Day One, and I moved to MobileMe (and iPhone 2.0) as millions of others last June.
That's the problem. Since the switch from the old .Mac services to the modern/state-of-the-art/Web2.0-style MobileMe, and the upgrade to the iPhone 2.0 platform that includes the AppStore, the whole setup sucks. My 6-months old MacBook often goes as slow as my 5-years old PowerBook, thanks to the Sync mechanism. Sending an email from the iPhone takes hours, due to a mismatch between the MobileMe stuff and the Orange network. Sending a photo from the iPhone to MobileMe ? forget it : the system don't find any shared album, although I've setup and used a couple of them on .Mac months ago. Since the very first app that I've downloaded on the iPhone, I get to reboot it at least three times a week.
Dear Apple, that is not fair. I never asked for all those troubles. I never wanted to think that you start doing wrong things.I don't want to think someday that you look like the guys in Redmond.
When I had to reboot my Duo once a day back in the mid 90's, that was no problem. It was even worst with a PC. When I had to reboot my iMac once a month in the late 90's, it was no problem neither : I was still a "paper" guy. Today, mid 2008, when I have to reboot my iPhone, it makes me crazy. Because I'm an All-Digital guy now, doing Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing all day long, thanks to the Googles and to... you.
So, Cupertino People : when are you going to make my life as simple as it was two months ago ?
I am a Cycling Freak, Tennis Fan, and Fiber Broadband Evangelist.
Among other things, I am currently managing the deployment of the World's largest Public Fiber-To-The-Home network aka "SarkoFiber".
*** Disclaimer : this is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, no matter who he is. ***
intuitive user interfaces to manage existing processes and files,
Recent Comments