Recently in Hyperconnectivity Category

This is my last blog posting, two years to the day and 160+ postings after entering the blogsphere, and six months after retiring from Nortel, where I worked for 37 years. I left out the front door, but was saddened to leave a company that had entered bankruptcy and was being sold off.

Having my own blog been fun and quite a learning experience!

Throughout I tried to educate, entertain and promote Nortel's cause in this exciting new medium.

Great set of articles crossed my desk on connecting a broad range of sensors in various forms.

We've all heard about and probably used toll-collection tags, security access key cards and retail tags, but many new apps are coming our way.

For example,
How about the first WiFi pacemaker that allows the doctor to monitor its performance? Could be life saving.

Certainly not.

But Larry Roberts, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, says that the Internet, the underlying fabric of Hyperconnectivity, is.

He suggests that traditional routers, such as those from Cisco and Juniper, just don't have the price/performance required to support Hyperconnectivity, the "exploding network of people, computing and things" (my term).

Larry suggests that you need flow-based routing to solve the problem, basically bringing back virtual circuits (introduced back in the mid-70s) to the packet world (and also visible in label switching or MPLS).

How about an on-line database of 2500, correction 250,000, medieval soldiers from the 14 and 15 century Britain.

There you can find that "Robert Fishlake served on three successive expeditions in 1378, 1379 and 1380, presumably in each case as an archer, before going on to give further service in Scotland and elsewhere, showing that archers might be just as professional in attitude and outlook as knights and esquires."

Fascinating stuff.

With only 5% of music downloads resulting in any cash exchange, copyright owners (artists, musicians, record studios and so on) are rightfully concerned.

But what to do? The French Government is taking a rather unique approach.

In France, there has been a raging debate over what is called the proposed 'three strikes law', whereby any Internet user observed as undertaking what are deemed illegal file transfers would be disconnected (on the third incident), UNILATERALLY.

Blogger Yoani Sanchez, 32, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

The catch is that she runs her blog by mail, and never sees what she writes! You see she lives in Cuba where connectivity is very limited and blogging not encouraged (to say the least) by the current government. Her audience spans the globe but excludes Cuba.

Being hyperconnected sometimes requires extreme measures!

Google's My Location service allows you to search for "pizza take-outs" nearby without having to enter a specific location. It uses any information that would help, including GPS, WiFi AP's and IP addresses.

But it can go well beyond that!

In the future, will personal tracking become a requirement from your employer, insurance company, bank or whatever?

For example, your employer may want to know that the company car is only being used for business; or your car insurance rate may be dependent on not driving to work every day; or your bank may want to know where you are to avoid fraudulent use of your credit card. The list goes on.

Will Hyperconnectivity become a life requirement?

But you thought it was only for people.

Well now you can use Twitter to track activity at the Tower Bridge in London.

For example, you could get a message such as
"I am opening for the MV Dixie Queen, which is passing downstream."

How about a Twitter message when your garage door is opened?

Seems like a Twitter world of endless possibilities.

We think of social networking and we think of Facebook, Wikis and the like.

But should Twitter be on this list.

I think not as it has seen little uptake as an interactive medium..

What Twitter has evolved into is a powerful new broadcast medium, whether used to track Hollywood celebrity reactions to Michael Jackson's death or what's really happening in Iran.

That was Coke's slogan back in the 70s.

With 1.6B consumer servings per day, Coca-Cola is always looking for new ways to serve their customers.

Enter Freestyle Coke, a hyperconnected vending machine that can give you 100 drink choices, while giving Coke better on-line inventory control and first hand market research.

How? By embedding 30 flavor cartridges (example that come to mind: caffiene, sugar, fruits) that network back to HQ.

Is a hamburger dispenser next?