Search Results for: direct manipulation

The Collaborative For Croquet

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We’ve got a bunch of Croquet stuff going on. We have the KidsFirst project in early education. There are a few folks who would like to work with the KidsFirst project as educators, academics, etc., but who need an entity to work with. We also have a fairly traditional open-source development project for the software used by KidsFirst, called the KAT: KidsFirst Application Toolkit.

And we REALY, REALLY, REALLY want a place that people can just connect to and try Croquet. To interact with others through Croquet. To come back another day and have some hope of finding the same 3d world, evolved though it may be, but still maybe having some of the same things that had been put there in the previous visit. A little open-source 3D-direction-manipulation real-time collaborative place on the Internet.

And so we have formed “The Collaborative For Croquet”.

Check it out at: CroquetCollaborative.org.

FCC Last Call Part II: Cyren Call Sings Again

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They should have named the damn thing Phoenix Call, given how often this idea keeps getting resurected. OTOH, it better suits the nature of the beast to name it for creatures whose enticing song lured sailors to their deaths than for one of my favorite characters in Harry Potter.

As I wrote before on the Public Knowledge Blog, Cyren Call wants the FCC to give it 30 MHz of spectrum for free from the returned broadcast analog spectrum set aside for auction. Technically, Cyren Call wants that 30 MHz allocated to a “Public Safety Trust” that would then partner with a private sector organization, but it amounts to the same thing. In exchange, Cyren Call promises to build a nifty national broadband network that would be available to public safety entities when they need it. In order to finance the network without raising taxes or imposing costs on the public safety community, Cyren Call would operate the remaining 99.999% of capacity as a commercial venture. What a bargain! Of course, Cyren Call would kep any profit over and above actual expenses, to give it incentive to run the network “efficiently.”

I wish I did so well from doing good.

You would think that when public safety entities would get suspicious of a proposal that sounds horribly like: “DEAR PUBLIC SAFETY ENTITY. I OFFERING TO YOU MANY MEGAHURTS OF SPECTRUM. CONGRESS RECENTLY PASSED A LAW TO MAKE SPECTRUM AVAILABLE TO COMMERCIAL SECTOR, BUT I THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE IT.” But while Cyren Call has encountered the harsh response from the incumbent wireless harpies, over 1300 “HONEST TRUSTWORTHY PUBLIC SAFETY ENTITY” commentors supported the Cyren Call proposal. Unsurprisingly, most supporting comments from public safety folks emphasized that the part of the proposal they really, really liked was the part about getting even more spectrum.

But Kevin Martin, who seems to be having a “celebrate the incumbent telco harpy” meeting this month, has thrown in an interesting apple of discord. The FCC proposes to create a system similar to Cyren Call, but on the 24 MHz already assigned to public safety rather than grabbing yet more spectrum (you can read the full Order here. In other words, the FCC seems to be saying to the public safety community “O.K., so do you all think this proposal is so wonderful when it doesn’t bring you another 30 MHz of prime spectrum?” Of course, it helps that this plan parallels a plan proposed by Verizon Wireless back in September, which is remarkably simlar to the Cyren Call plan but in the spectrum already allocated to public safety and inserting the words “Verizon Wireless” in every place you had the words “Cyren Call.”

More below . . . .

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The Federal Trade Commission Gets in on Network Neutrality

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As widely reported, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Deborah Platt Majoras announced that the FTC will look at network neutrality. In the same paragraph, however, she also expressed her doubts on the need for network neutrality legislation. That, combined with her choice of forum (Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit; PFF is a vigorous opponent of NN), the FTC’s natural bias toward post-conduct remedies rather than prophylactic regulation, and Majoras’ decision to sign off on the Adelphia transaction without considering the voluminous evidence collected by the FCC make me suspect that the FTC will conclude that Congress should take no action and that antitrust solves everything.

A bit more analysis below.

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Handicaping This Week’s Big Spectrum Auction

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And what a long strange trip its been to get here! In 2004, Congress passed the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act (CSEA), which required government users to vacate some choice spectrum so the FCC can auction it. You can see the FCC’s official page for this auction here. You can see my recent general musings on this auction on the Public Knowledge policy blog here.

But none of this tells the whole story. After two controversial rulemakings, a pending legal challenge, and the appearance of a host of new bidders, FCC Auction 66: AWS-1 is ready to start this week on August 9. A look at the list of who has come to play signals an auction of unparalleled visciousness, determination, and probable manipulation by sophisticated bidders because the FCC wussed out and did not adopt anonymous bidding.

For those interested in my handicaping what a report from the Center for American Progress describes as a corrupt means by which incumbents keep out competitors and what I have called “a really wonky version of Worlds of Warcraft,” read on!

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I Can't Quit You Brie, So I'm Gonna Put You Down For a While

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(Sorry, Willie Dixon.)

I haven’t been working on our Brie user-interface framework for a while now. We took it to a certain early level in Jasmine Croquet, in which we pretty solidly worked out user interface conventions, internal infrastructure, and the basic direct-manipulation philosophy.

Although not terribly novel (we stole liberally from David Smith, David Unger/Randall Smith, David Place/Pat O’Keefe, and, running out of Davids, Stallman/Sussman), Brie was still fairly advanced and abstract research, and we had more immediate work to do: Dormouse and the Croquet SDK release, and several projects using them. Brie had been sustained with financial support from NICT which has come to a pause. A great friend and entire world’s best salesman and demo-jock for Croquet went to Duke. So nothing got done on Brie following C5 ’06.

Brie has not yet been integrated with the current Croquet SDK. It still needs a lot of work in both the graphics and the API between private and replicated Croquet. It might be most efficient to let some dust settle here: Josh is working on new Croquet graphics, Andreas is working on 2D interfaces, and David Smith is working on the task/interactor model.

But the main thing is that I’m starting another project that I’m very excited about (more about this later), so I know that I won’t have time to work on Brie for a while. Fortunately, I do think that, say, phase III or so of the new project will be a driver for pulling Brie out of the closet again.

Anonymous bidding and not so anonymous shakedowns at the FCC

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Say what you like about Martin in other areas, but he is (so far) sticking to his guns on whether to require anonymous bidding for the upcomming AWS spectrum auction. MAP has actively supported this proposal, because it will make the auctions work better and facilitate entry by minority owned businesses and new, disruptive competitors (I’m stuck with them by statute, so I may as well try to get them to work right).

In perhaps the most telling evidence that anonymous/blind/sealed bidding (in which the identity of the bidder is not disclosed during the action) is a good idea, every incumbent (except VZ Wireless, which has been “targeted” in certain auctions) is lobbying fiercly against it. My favorite little tidbits of when the Sausage Factory turns nasty below.

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The Imagination Age

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This month’s Tech Review has an editorial that begins “Inventing the future…” and end with these two paragraphs:

“Traditionally, Technology Review hasn’t written that much about society. Our subject matter is emerging technologies, and they have historically been purchased by corporations, universities, and governments. That’s because emerging technologies used to require an extraordinary capital investment, one well beyond the means of most people in their private capacities. Nor did most people see the need to experiment with really novel technologies. Thus the personal computer, the local-area network, the Internet itself were all first used in commercial, government, or academic settings.

”But this is changing. The spread of cheap laptops, handheld devices, affordable Internet access, Wi-Fi, and a dozen other consumer technologies has led to a wonderful explosion of new social applications for them. But here’s the really interesting thing: most of these social technologies have simple editing and programming tools that let ordinary folks do innovative things that risk-averse corporations and government agencies would be hesitant to try. We suspect that Technology Review will be writing about the impact of new technologies on society much more frequently. Besides, social technologies are more fun.”

Here’s the letter to the editors that I just sent:

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What Is It About Immersive 3D?

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When something new comes along, we tend to describe what it is. If it’s something important, it takes a while to figure out why it’s important – what it is that is really different. The description of what something is tends to be somewhat dry and technical and it misses the point. For example, a telegraph is an encoder and a decoder in an electric circuit. But couriers and semaphores involve coders and decoders, and other stuff has had electric circuits. What was important about the telegraph was that it provided instantaneous long-distance communication. This is also what was important about its successors like the telephone and radio, even though the descriptions of what each is are quite different than that of the telegraph. It’s not as simple as describing what a new invention does for people. Quite often we don’t know how it will be used.

Since I first heard about Croquet, I’ve been trying to figure out what is really important about the immersive 3D that everyone first notices about it. I think I now have an idea. It turns out that the “immersive” part is key.

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Tales of the Sausage Factory: Will the Last Powell Out Please Turn Off the Lights?

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Michael Powell has announced his resignation as Chair of the FCC. Hardcore libertarian fiscal conservatives — such as the Wall St. J. and the CATO Institute — mourn his departure. By contrast, most public interest folks celebrate and condemn his legacies. Industry people, always wary of burning any bridges, give carefully guarded statements. And, of course, everyone speculates on who will be next chair.

As for my views? See below of course!

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Draft Progressive Principles for Spectrum Management

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I was recently asked by another organization to take a stab at my vision of progressive principles of spectrum management. My goal is to provide a set of guiding principles that go beyond mere economic efficiency or even freedom to innovate. While I feel these are important elements of any policy, the overarching goal of spectrum management should be, in the words of the Communications Act, “to make available to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex” the benefits of our communications system.

These are my own thoughts, and I am very curious to receive wider feedback from the Community at large. Please also keep in mind that these are a draft and represent my own best efforts and opinions. They do not represent any official position of any organization, and are certainly not the position of Media Access Project.

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