Wifi on steriods in the USA

While all news is currently alloted to the presidential campaign and the election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday 4 November another important vote was casted. The American regulator of the airwaves, FCC (Federal Communications Commission), voted 5-0 for the use of the white spaces between the television channels. Current wifi equipment makes use of the 2,4 GHz band (or the 5GHz band for more modern equipment supporting 802.11a/n, for example Apple Airport Basestation Extreme). The new vote of the FCC means that new wifi equipment will be able to use the unused white space between the channels alloted to TV. Why is this important ? The reason is that the TV spectrum has better characteristics for in home use. The UHF band, used for televison distribution, spans from 300MHz upto 3GHz. Lower frequencies have larger wavelength. Therefore they propagate better trough walls and other obstacles typically encountered in urban environments. It boils down that using the white space frequencies will lower the cost for providing ubiquitous wireless networks. Hopefully we will see more wide area wifi networks that provide free or cheap internet access in the near future.

More info:

• A vote for broadband in the "white spaces", Official Google Blog


• Open skies for white space broadband as FCC gives thumbs up, Ars technica


• Google’s Election-Day Victory: FCC Approves Unlicensed Use Of “White Spaces” Spectrum, Techcrunch


• Simply Explained, Cartoon by Geek and Poke


• FCC okays white space spectrum for wireless service, Telecom Magazine (thx, Kris for the tip)

No download mac version of Spore Creature Editor

UPDATE sunday 14 september 2008, 22u08: A download of the complete Spore game for mac is available here : http://www.gametreeonline.com/product.php?productid=16168
(Thx, matt)


UPDATE za 21 juni 2008, 11u30: A download version will become available by Gametree (hopefully soon).

Being delighted with EA's Spore Creature Editor free demo (I excuse them for the bugs), I preordered the full version for 6,99 euro. When the transaction was cleared, I got an email with a download url of the PC version instead of the MAC version. Moreover, it turned out that I had to use EA download manager that is only availble for PC. Today, I got an EA support mail stating that the full version of the EA Spore Editor is only for PC. Lukily, they kindly suggest a refund. I guess EA is more concerned with the Take-2 takeover than building support for games on mac.
Fortunately, this is now cleary indicated on the spore website (it was not when I preordered the full editor):

No download mac version is available. Only the box version is for mac.

Spore Creature Editor Demo is available

Here you can download the free demo of the Spore Creature Editor. This is what my nine years old son made:


I preordered the full version of the Spore Creature Editor for 6,99 euro. For the moment, I can't find the download link. I think it has something to do with the clearance of my visa card.

Also in the free demo, I could not type the @ sign. Very inconvenient because you need to enter an emaik adress to register. This does not work from an Belgian keyboard. A first i8n bug ??

Ipod Touch Firmware 1.1.2 also in ITunes Belgium

Already a few days announced, the new firmware for Apple's Iphone and Ipod Touch is available trough Itunes. Also in Itunes België :

The main new feature is that you can edit the calendar and the contacts with the Ipod Touch. The new update is a whopping 157 megabyte big, so it took 10 minutes to download via my DSL line. Installation went smooth. I'm reconsidering installing Spanning Sync
to synchronize my Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with Apple's Ical and contactbook. Spanning sync is free for the first 15 days.

Spore comes to Nintendo Wii

I've just read an interview with Will Wright. He announces some marvelous news: his new game "Spore" will also be released on the Nintendo Wii in the second quater of 2008. Just to wet your saliva go and look to Spore on EA's 360° panofantastic display.

Also "Lego Star Wars" is coming to the Wii end of 2007. The online mode is reserved for Xbox 360 and PS3 only. And Guitar Hero 3 for Wii and ... I'm gone write that nice letter to Santa Claus soon!!!

Now in Google Maps: length of line segments

In previous post Calculating the length of Google Maps line segments I presented a program that calculated the length of line segments drawn in Google Maps. Today Google Maps incorporated a new feature exactly for this purpose. If you go to your maps and click on the line segment, a popup appears on the map that contains the length of the segment. Look where the red arrow is pointing in the following screenshot:

So if you'r planning your next biketrip, you now know the distance instantly. Nice.

My script calculated the biking trip from my work to home is 36.35 kilometer and Google Maps reports 25.74 kilometer. I wonder who's most correct ?

Nintendo DS evolves into smartphone for kids

As already mentioned in a previous post about the "Wiivolution" the Nintendo DS Lite gets Voice over IP. I means that if you are in a free hotspot with wireless internet, you can call somebody else for free. It's not yet official by Nintendo as Endgadget reports: Nintendo DS Lite gets VOIP.

Interesting times ahead

Apple invited the press tomorrow 5 september. A lot of rumors are going on. New Ipod, the Beatles on Itunes, .... stay tuned.
Other rumours are heating forecast Google Wiki will be launched next week. Somthing I was waiting for more then a year (after they acquired Jotspot). Remember that it's more important how you can write the web than reading it. I guess Google Wiki will prove that.

And in case you didn't notice, Google buys news directly from press agencies and publishes on Google News. Just like Lost Remote I also think it's a landmark for Google because they leave the position being a neutral platform and become competitors of news agency's. Cutting out players in the value chain has always been a interesting strategy. The question will be if the automated news aggregation that taps the wisdom of the crowd will outperform human intelligence of experts. Indeed, interesting times ahead.

Google Mashup Editor

Google is sending out private invites for their Google Mashup Editor. I already signed up for it. Google Mashup Editor (GME) is a webbased tool for creating mashups using GME syntax along with HTML, CSS and Javascript. Hopefully I'm selected for an invite so that I can tell more about it. Read/write Web has already received their invite and wrote about it. Take the GME tour to learn the basics.

GME resides into the same class as Yahoo Pipes. Those editors are important because they attempt to make it as easy to write as to read the web ("The original slogan was always to have a web that was easy to write as it was to read", said Robert Cailliau of the World Wide Web Consortium.) Mashup editors can be used to make widgets or gadgets as Google likes to call them. Widgets are the latest buzz and receive a lot of attention. Silicon Valley sees them as a Web revolution in the making.

GME is based on the Google Web Toolkit. More and more AJAX libraries are popping up. I think about things like BackBase. What would you do, using GWT or Backbase ? Or dou you prefer vertical integration and thus opt for Adobe Flex ? It makes me wonder if GME makes using Google Gears really easy. In that case, GME might be a strong contender for Adobe Flex.