oneafrikan.com

By Frank Barnako
From the MarketWatch website (can’t find the direct link - no easily visible search on the site!!)

WASHINGTTON (MarketWatch) - MetroFi Inc. is offering free wireless broadband service in a 25-square-mile area including Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley. The company will support itself through advertising.

“Customers will be shown a banner advertisement,” MetroFi said in a news release. “Local businesses can take advantage of the local and regional nature of the network by providing links to their Web site, coupons, or announcements to those that are guaranteed to be near their establishment.”

Chuck Haas, CEO of the venture-capital-funded company, which was started by former Covad executives, said customer-acquisition costs are a business’s biggest expense. If you eliminate that, it’s cheaper to offer free service.

“We’ve broken the code on how to fund this network with advertising,” he told Wi-Fi Networking News.

Meanwhile, the city of Philadelphia has completed negotiating a 10-year contract under which EarthLink Inc. earthlink inc comwill build a wireless service and offer city residents low-cost Wi-Fi.

EarthLink will charge Internet-service providers a wholesale rate of $9 a month, and they will resell service to consumers, according to the Associated Press. The city council will assess the contract next month, and citywide access could be available within two years.

_ Scotsman.com Business - Media & Leisure - Disney thinking light years ahead

If you’re interested in reading more about the Pixar / Disney deal, then this is a pretty good article…

_ blog.newsvine.com - Newsvine Blog

Looks pretty interesting, although not yet sure if it’s something that will become a regular member of my “staying on top of all this technology and news shite” arsenal…

It does make me wonder whether this was created by techies with an idea, or people trying to scratch an itch - ‘cos as far as I can see, they haven’t really communicated what value Newsvine brings to me, and ths why I should use it over other stuff like Digg or Del.icio.us…

Your opinion?

Also - just sent a bunch of invites to friends - let me know if you want one to and I’ll do the necesary…

_ Commercial Breaks and Beats | Results

Does anyone know where I can find out who did the music for the House of Fraser TV advert currently on TV now? or where I can find the artist?

Thanks

_ underthecounter

To get the dirt on Wall Street personalities. An anonymous author posts inside dope from tipsters and links to the Web’s dishiest finance news. Written with humor, irreverence, and sometimes raunch.

Great example of niched blogging…

_ A List Apart: Articles: Web 3.0

Just in case you haven’t already read it…

_ InternAfrica » Mission Statement

InternAfrica is a Not-for-profit organisation which has been created to ensure Africans the right to dignity and adequate housing through the secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources, while promoting justifiable economic and social development.

Our goal is to uplift communities both rural and urban, through hands-on do-it-yourself approach.

More on housing in South Africa - respect that more (South) Africans are getting online and talking about what they’re doing…

_ AfriCAN HOUSEIT

Cannabis Homes made from Cannabricks, appropriate affordable green-housing for South Africa.

Looks interesting - a snails eye view of what’s happening on the ground…

America’s Most Connected Campuses
‘Stanford On ITunes’ Is For Everybody
Kate DuBose Tomassi, 01.24.06, 10:00 AM ET

In an unprecedented move, Stanford University is collaborating with Apple Computerto allow public access a wide range of lectures, speeches, debates and other university content through iTunes. No need to pay the $31,200 tuition. No need to live on campus. No need even to be a student. The nearly 500 tracks that constitute “Stanford on iTunes” are available to anyone willing to spend the few minutes it takes to download them from the Internet.

While a number of other universities are now using iTunes to distribute class-specific content to their students, including Duke University, Drexel University’s School of Education and the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Stanford is the first to make a substantial amount of recorded university events available to the public at large.

“One of Stanford’s primary missions is to educate the public,” says Scott Stocker, director of Web communications. Allowing the public to access the content “just felt like the right thing to do,” says Cindy Pearson, director of alumni programs.

Duncan Beardsley of Stanford’s class of 1959 says he has already downloaded about 30 tracks from Stanford on iTunes since the public launch last October. A lecture called “Trials and Truth” from a series entitled “Classes Without Quizzes” originally piqued Beardsley’s interest. He’s also downloaded lectures about global warming, why baseballs have stitches and correlations between how baboons and humans live.

Stanford has big plans for adding new content going forward. One example is recordings of sports events, says Pearson. November’s Stanford versus Berkeley football game, known on campus as “The Big Game,” is already videotaped and mailed to alumni clubs overseas. The plan is to use iTunes new video capabilities so folks will be able to watch the game without waiting for the package to come in the mail, says Pearson.

Walking tours of the campus might also be in Stanford on iTunes’ future, she says. The public could “tour” Stanford’s campus or art collection from home. Or, a visitor to campus could bring an iPod or MP3 player, or borrow one from the school, and set out on a guided audio tour.

It’s catching on. Over 130,000 tracks were downloaded from the site in the first two weeks, says Stocker. Through the end of the fall semester in December, on average, more than 15,000 tracks were downloaded per week.

http://www.forbes.com/digitalentertainment/2006/01/24/stanford-on-itunes_cx_kdt_06conncampus_0124stanford.html

_ Virtual Karma: Complete List of Web 2.0 Applications | Rian’s blog

Following is an alphabetically sorted list of popular Web 2.0 applications. The description for each of the application is taken from their own About or FAQ pages.

There’s a few more that I would add to this list, but it’s a very good one nonetheless…

_ Shaun Dewberry’s Weblog

Some real gems here:

Contemplate checking traffic online. Well, the picture would be the same size and it only shows about four intersections in a 500 kilometre radius from the center of town. Other sites for traffic info? No there are none. Besides, I’ve nearly reached my 3 Gigabyte download cap for this month from my wireless ISP, so it’s just a waste of bytes. Shit. No traffic info for me.

Yes, download capping is as bad assed as they say it is - and WTF, 3GB - what’s that? I sneeze at 3GB

Time to go have some lunch at the local coffee shop. Boss says there’s an important mail coming in. “I’ll just take my laptop with and connect over the coffee shop wireless LAN.” Arrive at coffee shop. “Wireless LAN? Do we make that? I’m sorry sir, would you like that with cream or foam?” Shit. No wireless LAN for me.

I did ask for a free wireless lan once at a Coffee Republic in London once, and the uber cool barista told me it was free, all I needed was a modem - no, really?! I’ve tried to get access at Starbucks before using a TMobile account, and even that was hard to connect with…. so I guess that even though we have it, perhaps it’s not all it’s cracked up to be?

So what does digital lifestyle mean to me? Having the same set of services (at reasonable cost) that I read about every day online, the stuff that many technically literate Americans and Europeans have come to take for granted in their everyday lives.

I guess that’s what scares me about living in Africa today - all the stuff that I take for granted here in Londres just isn’t realistic in South Africa, as much as the positive people in SA will tell you different. I mean, how is a person who starts getting withdrawal symptoms when he hasn’t checked his mail for a few hours or can’t download anything and everything going to survive?

Answer: make getting the best of both worlds a priority

;-)

_ http://del.icio.us/

Is it just me, or is del.icio.us very slow of late?