March 2008 Archives

Metaaso mermaid is a line of products based on a Peer-To-Peer (P2P) technology, which is completely server-less and allows users to broadcast data/audio/video/text to millions around the world, without the need for heavy infrastructure, and over their very own private, secure peer-to-peer network.

What's interesting about mermaid is that it's the first IPv6 P2P sharing application that I'm aware of that makes extensive use of the new IPv6 address scheme, which helps get around pesky NAT issues and share data/media with your other peers.

Mermaid can also be used for P2P VoIP that doesn't require centralized supernodes like Skype does. In addition to VoIP you can also broadcast your webcam, and your voice live, to millions of people worldwide in real-time over your own private, secure, P2P network, optimized for webcam and voice broadcast.

What else can you you do with mermaid? They claim the following capabilities:

- The ability to broadcast MOVIES in realtime to millions of people worldwide over a private, secure, server-less P2P network.

- The ability to broadcast and receive NEWS, over a server-less, P2P network spanning the globe, where you can get the news, as soon as it gets published.

- The ability to broadcast ANY audio/video source connected to your computer over your own private, secure, P2P network to millions of people around the globe.

- Multiple people connected to each other, sharing their webcams, their desktops, their voice and files (file sharing) over their very own private P2P network, bringing global, and scalable multi-node video conferencing to mainstream.

How does it work? Well according to their website, the Mermaid products are pure peer-to-peer, and do not require any major infrastructure to scale to millions of people. "What that means, is that you can create your own network, which will be identified with your network-id and password, and over that network, you can broadcast movies, webcam feeds, audio feeds, news, files to all the people connected to your network. What's more, is that you can put your own ads to be shown on your network(s)."

They go on to explain that the more people on your network, the better. In fact, they explain, "No, you won’t need a heavy-tank computer or a gazzilion-terabytes/second network to stream to millions of people. The collective power of all the computers connected to your network will be harnessed. You can easily make do with an average PC and an average network."

Cool!

One one caveat - you need IPv6, as they explain here:

The software works like a charm on office LANs, and campus and other networks. But you want your network to be globally available right? Good, so you need to get IPv6. Call your ISP, and say you need ‘a globally routable I-P-V-6 address’. If they don’t, tell them you’re switching ISP coz they’re so lazy that they can’t click a button on their screens.

That’s pretty much it…

Yeah, cuz IPv6 is being deployed like gangbusters - NOT! I know, they keep saying this is the year of IPv6, but I'm still waiting... Still, once IPv6 does take off, interesting apps like this P2P IPv6 app will certainly take off. No doubt Bittorrent and other popular P2P sharing apps will get on board the IPv6 wagon . Due to the server-less infrastructure, it will be even more impossible to shut down pirated media since there are no centralized torrent trackers. Take that RIAA and MPAA

The software is FREE, but it is advertising supported - apparently to support their beer drinking habits.

This is the Biggest Loser Finale results week. Hopefully, you've been keeping track of my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition and enjoying my weekly updates. Here's a recap:

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).
Week 10 (March 17th) - weighed in at 174lbs (-6 lbs).
Week 11 (March 24th) - weighed in at 174lbs (0 change).

This week (finale):
Week 12 (March 31st) - weighed in at 170lbs (-4 lbs).

I worked my tail off this weekend, including a 3.5 hour workout on Saturday that included over 5 miles on the treadmill as well as weight training. The gym owner noticing my lengthy workout commented "You've been here almost 4 hours? You really want to win the free gym membership, don't you?"

Well, as of 3pm today, everyone has weighed in for the final time. And the winner is...

[drumroll please]
...
...
...

I won the gym's Biggest Loser contest with a 14.14% percentage loss and 28lbs! My wife came from behind to tie for 2nd place with a 9.6% loss, which means the Keating family dominated The Biggest Loser contest. Too bad this wasn't The Biggest Loser Couples.

Ok, and now the Final Top 6 Leaderboard (15 total contestants):

1) TOM 28 lbs lost = 14.14%
2) NICOLE (18 lbs lost) and JOAN (14 lbs lost) = 9.6%
3) KIM 19 lbs lost = 7.7%
4) SHAWN 11.5 lbs lost = 6.7%
5) MARY 10 lbs lost = 4.7%
6) ERIN 7.75 lbs lost = 4.4%

Not only did I win 1st prize (free 1-year gym membership), but my wife and I were on the same team with 3 other players and we also won the "team prize" ($50 AMEX gift card) since we had the largest percentage loss as a team as seen here:

Team Leaderboard by Trainer:
Team One Lisa's Team (includes Nicole, me, and 3 others): 7.6%
Team Two Sally's Team: 3.9%
Team Three Danielle's Team: 2.9%

But it's not over... While the gym Biggest Loser competition is over, the race goes on. I still have to win the TMC Biggest Loser competition which ends May 1st. Reminds me of a famous scene in Ben-Hur - one of the greatest movies of all time - where Messala tells Judah Ben-Hur that the battle is not over...

Ben-Hur: Where are they? Where are they? (shouting) Where are they?
Messala: (vengefully) Look for them in the Valley of the Lepers, if you can recognize them. (grabbing Judah's clothing) It goes on. It goes on, Judah. The race, the race is not over.

I may not be a huge fan of ringback tones or ringback videos, but I do like ringtones. However, today, a partnership between telecommunications services platform provider NMS Communications and Korean mobile services developer WITCOM Co. Ltd., SK Telecom, has launched a new ringback tone service, called T-Ring, which allows its subscribers to know when they are making in-network calls.

SK Telecom's new service automatically sends a special ringback tone that lets the caller know that the call is in-network, meaning that the charges will be lower than an out-of-network call.

This way, for the truly "cheap", they can let the call go to voicemail or answer the call and only stay on for a short while, since they know it's a more expensive call. Personally, I think you already have a bucket of minutes that are "free" as part of your plan, so it doesn't matter if it's in-network or out-of-network. If you're going over your bucket of minutes it's time to change your plan anyway.

Nevertheless, after the jump is the news release which explains it all.

Last week, I was listening to Mark Levin on WABC 770 AM radio when I learned that Herb Peterson, the inventor of the tasty Egg McMuffin had passed away at the age of 89. Herb's invention actually paved the way for McDonald's to introduce breakfast to McDonald's restaurants - previously only lunch & dinner were served. Mark Levin interviewed Herb's son David Peterson who explained that breakfast now accounts for 30% of McDonald's business. So McDonald's franchise owners owe a lot to this man. As do I, since Egg McMuffins are one of my favorite foods. Though with my Biggest Loser contest going on, I haven't had an Egg McMuffin in months!

Herb actually began his career with McDonald's Corp. as vice president of the company's advertising firm, D'Arcy Advertising. He even wrote McDonald's first national advertising slogan, "Where Quality Starts Fresh Every Day." Peterson then became a franchise owner of six McDonald's restaurants in Santa Barbara and Goleta, California.

Per Mark's interview with David Peterson, David explained how his father Herb loved eggs Benedict and then worked on creating something similar for his McDonald's franchises. With that, the Egg McMuffin was born! It made its debut at a restaurant in Santa Barbara that Herb Peterson co-owned with his son David. The Egg McMuffin is a breakfast sandwich that consists of an egg that had been formed in a Teflon circle with the yolk broken, and topped with a slice of cheese and a slice of grilled Canadian bacon. It was served open-faced on a toasted and buttered English muffin

I took an excerpt of the Mark Levin show of the David Peterson interview and posted it here as an .mp3 if you want to hear the interesting history of the Egg McMuffin along with Mark's comedic interviewing style.

After my Snom VoIP phone hacked article, I received a response from snom indicating that the vulnerability had more to do with a user not setting a password on the IP phone than any sort of bug or vulnerability in the snom firmware itself. Well that's certainly good news. I guess users or IT administrators that don't set passwords on the IP phones have only themselves to blame if their phones are hacked.

This direct from Snom...

CVE-2008-1248:
Yes, you can send an HTTP-POST to the phone and let it dial a number. But you can protect your phone by setting a password. If you set a password then nobody can post an HTTP request to dial a number. The statement in the referred web site that Snom phone don't support passwords is wrong. You can set a password to protect your phone. And you should do it if your phone is connected to the Internet directly.

Our next firmware release will warn the user that no password is set and that his phone is vulnerable.

This is not a real vulnerability, so we can't say a particular firmware is affected, since you can avoid it by setting a password

CVE-2008-1249:
Yes, this is possible right now when the flash plugin is enabled. But the flash plugin is not enabled by default in current firmwares. So a phone is not vulnerable unless you enable the flash plugin. But you can protect your phone by setting a password like for CVE-2008-1248.

Our next firmware release will warn the user that no password is set and that his phone is vulnerable.

Our release after the next will change the flash plugin so that this isn't possible any more.

This is not a real vulnerability, so we can't say a particular firmware is affected, since you can avoid it by setting a password

CVS-2008-1250:
Yes, Snom phone are vulnerable to cross-site request forgery (CSRF). All firmware up to V7.1.30 are affected.

We have changed our web frontend. It uses tokens and html-encoding for values entered in input fields now. Our next firmware release will not be vulnerable to CSRF any more.

CVS-2008-1251:
Yes, Snom phone are vulnerable to Cross-site scripting (XSS). All firmware up to V7.1.30 are affected.

We have changed our web frontend. It uses tokens and html-encoding for values entered in input fields now. Our next firmware release will not be vulnerable to XSS any more.

We also created a website:
http://www.snom.com/javascriptsecurity.html

No Asterisk fan can do without some Asterisk paraphernalia such as an Asterisk or Digium T-Shirt, Asterisk book, maybe even an Asterisk coffee mug from ITEXPO where lots of Asterisk happenings take place. Well now you can add an Asterisk USB hub to your collection of all-things Asterisk! This four-port USB hub in the shape of an "asterisk" was created by industrial designer Joel Escalona

He writes:

Some of these designs have been fortunate enough to be manufactured, others were just lucky to be prototypes or models and the less fortunate live within a render. So if at some point you are interested in finding out more about any of my projects or you want to produce, buy or distribute one, do not hesitate to contact me to ask for more details about any of my designs.

So Asterisk fanboys (& girls) give Joel a shout if you want to add this Asterisk hub to your desktop. You'll be the envy of all your fellow co-workers that also love Asterisk.

OctroTalk mobile instant messaging client features connectivity to Google Talk/Jabber with MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo, IM capabilities, VoIP, P2P file transfer, folder sharing, quick picture messaging, and more.

OctroTalk works over both low-bandwidth and high-bandwidth connections, including  GPRS/EDGE/CDMA/WiFi/Bluetooth data connections. OctroTalk supports a low bandwidth codec with low CPU usage requirements so it runs quite well on smart phone devices. It currently runs on Windows Mobile smartphones, Windows Mobile Pocket PC, and Symbian S60 3rd Edition. OctroTalk features an easy to use user interface that supports one handed operation and 5-way navigation. OctroTalk currently supports GoogleTalk/Jabber, MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo.

Interestingly, when you logout from the Google/Jabber account, the application will automatically log you off from all your accounts including MSN, AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. You can be connected to MSN, AOL, ICQ or Yahoo! only when you are connected to Google Talk/Jabber. I guess Google Talk/Jabber must act as the mediation to the other IM services.

In any event, OctroTalk allows you to have multiple IM sessions going on simultaneously which will appear as tabs, as seen here:



One cool feature is that If you are using the Google Talk account, then for your Google Talk buddies you can archive your chat conversations and search an information in your Gmail account. Another cool feature is the ability to share a folder as seen here:



Emoticons are supported (comes with the Microsoft MSN Messenger emoticons). Initiating a VoIP call is pretty easy to do. Here's a screenshot of a VoIP call being initiated:


The only limitation is that you can only VoIP someone with a Google Talk/Jabber account. It doesn't support VoIP connectivity with MSN, AIM, ICQ, or Yahoo.

With OctroTalk you can create or join chat conference rooms. It appears that OctroTalk hosts the conference rooms but it can support other services. The conference rooms only support IM and not VoIP. I'd like to see group conferencing with VoIP capabilities in a future release. Of course, that would require MCUs and possibly some heavy transcoding, but it's certainly a feature people want.

Summary of Features:

• Always on connected to Google Talk/Jabber with MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo transports
• Complete VOIP product. Access to PSTN.
• Supports Low Bandwidth Codec (even works with EDGE/GPRS/CDMA).
• Streamlined UI. Optimized for one-handed operation. Today Screen on Pocket PC. Home Screen support for Smartphone.
• Extremely fast P2P file transfer. Quick picture messaging. 
• Low CPU usage. Only VOIP product that works on Treo 700w (300 MHz processor).
• Secure and Encrypted connection to GoogleTalk. Google Talk messages are encrypted using industry standard TLS/SSL.
• Message Archiving in your GMail Account.
• Share files with your buddies (automated file transfer).
• Access your computer remotely. Install OctroTalk for Windows on your desktop, and share a folder with OctroTalk on your Mobile.
• Support for GroupChat/Conferencing. OctroTalk lets you create/join Jabber conference rooms.

Surely Disney World would never experience a power outage, right? After all, Disney World rakes in millions of dollars each year from tourists. That includes thousands of dollars from my family visits to Disney World. Not to mention they are in Hurricane Valley, so surely their CTO and electrical engineers have backup power systems in place with tons of redundancy, right? Wrong!

According to the Orlando Sentinel, "A circuit breaker tripped at Disney's Epcot Center this morning, causing parts of the park to lose power and some rides to close down temporarily."

The article goes on to explain that a breaker tripped causing the entire park to "experience a sudden change in voltage, much like when lights flicker during a thunderstorm", according to Disney spokesperson Kim Prunty.

Apparently, it started at 11:30am and most attractions were up and running at this by 2 p.m. Egads! An hour and a half outage? That's like what, how many rides missed? Oh about 1 turn at Test Track, a notoriously long line.

Disney doesn't know what caused the breaker to trip. That makes you feel confident, doesn't it? According to the article, the power outage was limited to parts of Future World and the main entrance, but several rides stopped because of the power surge and had to go through a restarting process.

I'm headed back to Disney World May 29th. Can't wait to go! Gotta catch up with my old pal Goofy... Maybe he tripped the circuit breaker. He's always tripping up on things.

Word on the street is that there will be a 4-5 hour outage of all RIM servers tonight. The outage is expected to start at 11pm PST for upgrades to the BIS servers. While I commend RIM for upgrading their servers, Friday night ain't exactly the best time to be bringing down the servers. There are probably more email and text messages sent on Friday night than any other night. After all it's happy hour, date night, movie night, etc.

Well, at least the outage is set for 11pm PST & 2am EST so that is pretty late. Only you late night party dudes/dude-ettes might experience the outage. So don't be upset if you're in the middle of emailing or sending Blackberry PIN messages to your significant other and they don't respond.

You might actually have to call the other person - perish the thought.

Well regular text messages should work as well.
Wonder if the upgrades will mean faster and more reliable email delivery...

We at TMC have heard the cries from developers for a stronger development track at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo to focus on more technical development-related topics. As a developer myself with a background in computer engineering, I discussed with Rich Tehrani and others the need for a strong developers track at ITEXPO.

In May of 2007, TMC actually held a separate show called Communications Developer Conference (Comm Dev 07), which was fairly successful for such a 'niche' show. Although it was successful, we realized it made much more sense to co-locate Communications Developer Conference at ITEXPO, TMC's flagship IP communications conference that draws 15,000 attendees each year and no doubt dozens if not hundreds of developers.

With that said, I am happy to report today that TMC is bringing the Communications Developer Conference to ITEXPO!

Without tooting our horn too much, this makes TMC's ITEXPO the #1 educational IP communications conference for developers - especially when you consider the following:

• ITEXPO hosts the trixbox FtOCC (Fonality trixbox Open Communications Certification) classes based on the open source trixbox IP-PBX. I wrote about how successful these classes were and how one trixbox FToCC class member won the car raffle! Guess geeks do get lucky sometimes.
• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 training classes @ITEXPO - OCS 2007 is a complex product and it has a lot of potential for developers to code their business apps to work tightly with OCS 2007. As far as I know, ITEXPO was the only conference to hold OCS 2007 classes.
• Stay tuned for info on other open source training initiatives at the show.

Add all this together along with the co-location of Comm Dev 08 with ITEXPO and there is no reason why developers shouldn't attend the next ITEXPO. It's taking place September 16-18, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I'll certainly be there and might even sit on some classes myself to rub elbows with my fellow developer geeks.

ars technica has a great article on how Vonage won its fight with the state of Nebraska over service fees. Nebraska wanted Vonage to "chip in" by paying into the state's Universal Service Fund (USF), a fund designed to offset the costs of providing phone service to remote areas. A court ruled in favor of Vonage by declaring federal law excludes VoIP providers from paying service fees. This is great news for VoIP service providers, especially ones that don't own the last mile, since they can continue to offer service at prices that drive the cost of traditional PSTN phone service down.

Vonage doesn't "ride" on phone wires anyway - they ride on the Internet - so why should they pay into the USF? Well, technically, a Nebraska citizen could have DSL Internet access and be using Vonage. But if they have DSL, they have a phone line and probably pay a service fee already. Actually, most phone companies don't offer "naked DSL" (Internet only - no phone service), so in most cases Vonage customers would be using cable broadband not DSL. In which case, why should Vonage subsidize the USF when it doesn't even "ride" on top of the phone wires? And even if it did, lots of Internet applications ride on top of DSL phone lines. Shall we start forcing MySpace, YouTube or Google to pay into the USF? Sheesh!

ars technica excerpt:

Late last year, VoIP provider Vonage sued the state of Nebraska over the Nebraska Public Service Commission's attempts to force it to pay into the state's Universal Service Fund. A federal court has rebuffed the Cornhusker State's attempts, barring the PSC from collecting USF fees from Vonage and, by extension, any other VoIP provider operating within the state.

In 2006, the Nebraska PSC decided that VoIP providers operating within the state boundaries should be forced to contribute to the USF, which is used to keep local telephone rates down and subsidize broadband access in Nebraska's rural areas. The decision required Vonage and its competitors to "pay a surcharge... for all their intrastate Nebraska traffic," finding that "federal law did not preempt that authorization."

The problem is that federal law does have something to say on the subject, and it contradicts Nebraska's opinion regarding whether VoIP is subject to state regulation.

Click here for more...

So I get Six Apart's Movable Type newsletter which talks about how they want the Movable Type community to help make Movable Type faster. After all, Movable Type is open source now, so what better opportunity than to ask the community for help making Movable Type faster, right? Interested, I decide to click through and lo & behold their Movabletype.org website is down. Oh, the irony! No doubt Wordpress fans will seize upon this shortly to add to the Movable Type vs. Wordpress war.

Below is a snippet from the newsletter, which is interesting for MT fans, including myself. I'm just hoping the outage doesn't last long since I'd like to grab a copy of the code to try out.

MT: Faster and More Fiery!

Okay, so we're not setting Movable Type on fire. But the important news is, the Movable Type team is on fire, working to soup up your site with a bunch of new powers from performance enhancements to some exclusive new location-based features. Here's a peek at what's on tap, as well as a chance to show your support for MT.

FASTER!

We’re always on the lookout for ways to make the Movable Type platform better. And first among those improvements is pure performance. From publishing pages to leaving comments to managing your blog, there's no part of working with MT that wouldn't be better if it were a little more zippy.

So we've got the entire MT team -- all over the world -- focused 100% on making MT faster. And, even if you're not a coder, you can help out in the effort -- we've made an experimental version of MT that's got a performance monitoring system, the equivalent of hooking an athlete up to a bunch of medical sensors. The anonymous data that this custom version of Movable Type collects can be sent back to the team, so they can see exactly where improvements need to be made.

Want to find out how to get the code, how to share your data with the team, and what else we're doing about making MT zippy? Check out our post on the Movable Type Community blog.

A Movable Type Exclusive: Yahoo! Fire Eagle

From his first days working on Movable Type 1.0, our co-founder and CTO Ben Trott has always been interested in connecting the platform to cool web services, especially ones having to do with location. (Or, as geeks call it, geodata.)

So naturally, when our friends at Yahoo! launched their new service called Fire Eagle, which is all about connecting together applications that can use or provide location data, we knew exactly what Ben would be hacking on. As a result, Movable Type is the first and only blogging platform in the world to have an advanced plugin for connecting your blog to this exciting new service, provided directly from the person who first coded on the platform itself.

Best of all, this innovative new capability connects to the last exciting new feature we released for the platform, Movable Type's Action Streams. Action Streams collect all of your activities from the different web services you use around the web, and let you publish them easily on your site under your full control. And now every time your Fire Eagle location changes, you can share it with whomever you choose using the power of Action Streams.

To find out more about the Fire Eagle plugin for Movable Type, you can read about it from Ben Trott himself, get started by grabbing the free plugin for your Movable Type install, and make it even more powerful by combining it with the free Action Streams plugin. We can't wait to see what the creative minds in the Movable Type community do with all of these new capabilities.

Continuing my updates for my local gym's The Biggest Loser competition, here's Week #11. Need I remind you that this this past week was a holiday weekend with Easter Sunday a couple days ago. I knew this was going to be a troublesome week for me since I was going to be visiting with family to celebrate Easter. This meant lots of tempting foods. In fact, I ate turkey, 9 pieces of cocktail shrimp, mashed potatoes with butter, corn, and a roll with butter. For dessert I had a couple thin mints, Carvel ice cream cake, chocolate mousse cheesecake with fudge frosting, and a piece of my wife's Easter Lemon Pie with homemade whipped cream. On top of it all, my wife got me a giant 1 foot tall chocolate Easter Bunny rabbit from Bridgewater Chocolate. I cannot resist chocolate. You think you're a chocoholic? The entire bunny's ears and head was gone in less than a day.

Now if you recall, in Week 7, I had a shoulder injury, but regardless I wasn't going to make any excuses for not losing weight. I said I wouldn't gain weight on any week. In Week 7 I wrote, "Anyway, even with the injury I'm hoping to lose at least 1lb per week. I may have a few 0 weight changes, but I'm hoping to never have a weight gain. Wish me luck!"

With my virtual guarantee I would not have a week with a weight gain you're probably wondering how the heck I could eat all that food, including 3 main desserts and a massive piece of chocolate and expect to not gain weight. (Mind you the weigh-in was the day after Easter.) Well, that's a damn good question!

I knew I would want to eat my favorite foods and desserts for Easter, so I did three things. One, I lowered my calories slightly last week. Two, I worked out like a mad man burning anywhere from 400-1000 calories per day in the gym. Third, I used mental motivation by watching & listening to inspiring music and videos this week. Specifically, I have on my Microsoft Zune movie clips from Rocky movies and some of the soundtrack songs.

One of my favorite inspiring movie clips is when Rocky faces Ivan Drago, the giant Russian in Rocky IV. Rocky, the much shorter fighter and of course the underdog had to use his will to overcome seemingly impossible odds.

Duke: [to Rocky] You see? You see? He's not a machine, he's a man, he's a man!
Drago: [to his own trainer] He's not human. He's like a piece of iron.


I kept telling myself I will not gain weight this week. I will not fail. Irish pride and ego certainly help. While I can't compare my workout ethic to Rocky, I certainly did push myself harder so I could eat what I wanted on Easter.

And the verdict? I weighed in at 173.75, a 1/4 pound loss!! Although the gym rounds up so I stayed at 174 pounds - the same as last week. I'm ecstatic I didn't gain weight, yet ate whatever I wanted.

Here's the full week-by-week recap followed by the Top 5 Leaderboard Standings:

Week 1 (Jan 14th) - weighed in at 198lbs (original weight)
Week 2 (Jan 21st) - weighed in at 189lbs (-9 lbs)
Week 3 (Jan 28th) - weighted in at 189lbs (0 change)
Week 4 (Feb 4th) - weighed in at 186lbs (-3 lbs)
Week 5 (Feb 11th) - weighed in at 186lbs (0 change)
Week 6 (Feb 18th) - weighed in at 184lbs (-2 lbs).
Week 7 (Feb 25th) - weighed in at 183lbs (-1 lbs).
Week 8 (March 3rd) - weighed in at 180lbs (-3 lbs).
Week 9 (March 10th) - weighed in at 180lbs (0 change).
Week 10 (March 17th) - weighed in at 174lbs (-6 lbs).

This week:
Week 11 (March 24th) - weighed in at 174lbs (0 change).

Ok, and now the Top 5 Leaderboard:

1.) Tom/me 12.1% body weight lost (24 lbs)
2.) Joan 8.9% body weight lost (13.5 lbs)
3.) Nicole 8.3% body weight lost (15.5 lbs)
4.) Kim 8.1% body weight lost (20 lbs)
5.) Shawn 5.5% body weight lost (9.5 lbs)

This is the final week, with the final weigh-in taking place March 31st. Joan has been gaining on me and took the #2 spot from my wife, Nicole. Joan's starting weight was only 151, so all she needs to do is lose 5lbs this week and if I lose 0 she's actually beats me by 0.1%. This of course means I need to lose at least a couple pounds just to be safe and win the free year gym membership. I'm going to shoot for 4 pounds this week which will put me at 170lbs. If I can get one more pound and be at 169, I will be ecstatic. That would be >15% weight loss in just 11 weeks!

Wish me luck for this final run to the finish line!

Some interesting news from Motorola I thought I'd share... Motorola Inc. announced today that it is extending the reach of its field-proven Canopy wireless broadband system with the introduction of the 400 series of access points and subscriber modules in the 5.4 GHz spectrum. Based on Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology, which provides improved near-line of sight (nLOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) coverage, the Canopy 400 series allows service providers and enterprise network owners to extend broadband network coverage into urban areas where obstructions and foliage have limited system expansion.

By leveraging OFDM technology in the access and backhaul layers, the Canopy 400 series significantly enhances overall network performance and reach. The modules offer higher throughputs, up to 21Mbps, and extended range, accompanied with GPS synchronization to mitigate self interference. The Canopy 400 series modules, part of the MOTOwi4™ Fixed Point-to-Multipoint portfolio, are now available in Europe, Middle East and Africa and soon in Latin America. North America availability is pending final FCC certification.

With these capabilities, service providers can offer applications such as high speed data transfer, video surveillance, Voice over IP (VoIP), and gaming to subscribers who were not previously reachable. Enterprise network operators can also benefit from this series of products to extend connectivity to urban areas and business parks where line of sight is not always available or for inexpensive backhaul access.

“The Canopy 400 Series allows us to expand our network in environments not previously possible and do so cost-effectively, providing more revenue to our bottom line,” said Stig Petterson, CEO and Technical Manager, Totalnett AS, a Norwegian Wireless Service Provider. “We now have the ability to reach underserved customers with an economical, reliable solution.”

The Canopy 400 series AP and SM products easily integrate to existing Canopy networks and exhibit the same ease of deployment and reliable operation as the rest of the Canopy portfolio. Many of the Canopy accessories can also be used with this new series of products.

“Meeting the needs of a wide variety of customers can be challenging. The introduction of the Canopy 400 series is an additional option in our wireless broadband portfolio enabling service providers to reach more end users,” said Phil Bolt, Senior Director, Motorola Wireless Broadband Engineering and Product Management. “This new offering is one more way in which Motorola maintains the commitment to providing reliable, high-quality wireless broadband solutions at a low investment.”

The Canopy® 400 series is a component of the wi4 Fixed family of broadband solutions, part of the MOTOwi4™ portfolio of solutions for public and private networks which also includes wi4 Mesh, wi4 Indoor and wi4 WiMAX.

With increasing wireless mobile phone users along with more sophisticated wireless devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone chewing up bandwidth, the need for wireless backhaul technologies is increasing. I am reminded of my 2005 TMC Labs review of NMS AccessGate, a wireless backhaul platform. that aggregates T1/E1 communications onto a common backhaul between the cell site and the MSO. It also performes statistical multiplexing which suppresses idle frames and idle channels for 2G services, making the most of backhaul bandwidth. It achieves a bandwidth savings ratio of up to 2:1.

I'm going to steal my introduction here:

Optimizing bandwidth utilization has become more critical even though simultaneously technology is evolving to improve bandwidth throughput — whether it’s wireless, over copper (DSL, T1, E1, etc.) or fiber. The reason is simply cost and the resultant margins. In an increasingly competitive telcom/datacom landscape, keeping your costs low with the highest possible profit margin is critical. In most wireless networks, operators bear the recurring cost of traffic backhauling in order to connect geographically dispersed cell sites with their core networks. As access networks have been built out to support wireless services, each newly deployed service has required additional dedicated transmission equipment (such as leased lines, satellite trunks, or microwave links) between the base station and the base station controller. According to NMS Communications, this backhaul cost can represent up to 20–30 percent of total network operating expenses (OpEx). By reducing the number of these connections, operators can eliminate a significant portion of network OpEx.

Today, Rich Tehrani points me to a relatively new TMCNet channel called Wireless Backhaul covering the lastest happenings in the wireless backhaul space.

Here's a teaser.

Wireless service providers migrating their mobile offerings to packet-based 3G and 4G/LTE/WiMAX technologies are facing a significant increase in bandwidth demands (up to 20 times today’s rates by 2012) over their wireless backhaul networks, whether their own or leased from ILECs or alternative access providers. To provide this level of capacity in a cost-efficient manner, wireless backhaul is migrating to Ethernet from T1 TDM private lines.

Now go check out the wireless backhaul channel.