The Hypocrisy Weblog

cnet’s web 2.0 blog, “Webware” has announced it’s Webware 100 winners-list. The question is now; how is this list relevant to anyone in the Internet-business? Each and every category, 10 of them, has 10 winners each – and each and every site on the top 100-list anyone who’s involved in working with the Internet (in any way) have heard of.

The categories are; Browsing, Communications, Community, Data, Entertainment, Media, Mobile, Productivity and Commerce, Publishing, Reference.

Surely, it is a good ego boost for the people behind the services to get recognition, but does it serve any journalistic purpose? I am not so sure about that; Rafe Needleman and the Webware crew are preaching for the already saved. There is no internal ranking of the sites in the individual categories – so how do I as a visitor know which site got more votes than the other? (Yes, alright – they do have a list of the over-all top 10 and the sites that got over 1000 votes, though it doesn’t show the internal ranking in between the sites within each category. Perhaps the over-all statistic material wasn’t enough?! I don’t know…)

From my own perspective I am glad that the swizz army-knife-like site Netvibes, which deserves more media coverage – as it is a really nice service to keep track on all your communication needs ranging from rss-feeds (sites, forums, email, blogs etc), to email, to skype, to.. yeah – you get the idea.

Google was the company with most services in the top 100-list, yet this is not surprising as they are the biggest site on the Internet.

To the Webware authors; Please make the list more detailed the next time and get a broader statistic foundation (aka get more people to vote on the list), then we’re talking about a relevant list.

My local morning paper “Norrbottens Kuriren” had an article about HAP (swedish only) – “High Altitude Platform Station” and how this technique can revolutionize how we access Internet-related services while being mobile.

It was a happy surprise to see an article about this technique in my local newspaper, and it is certainly relevant as we both have the technological and industrial interests up here with LuleÃ¥’s Technichal University (LTU) and the space research facility Esrange. Just too bad that Esrange is the only partner in this program, and only as a technological partner for the actual launches of the unmanned vehicles.

HAP is a system where you have a range of different unmanned flying vehicles that cruise on around 20000 meters altitude. This is well above where the commercial airlines fly their airplanes, and well below commercial satellites cruising range. These unmanned vehicles have a current datatransfer-capacity of around 120 Mbit / second, and a ground area-range of around 60km in diameter.

The use of HAPs is very broad, from enabling fastmoving trains and airplanes to get connected to the Internet, large areas on the ground can get Internet-access, areas that aren’t economical in other cases to provide other forms of broadband Internet-access to (such as xDsl). Also extra capacity can be given to events such as the olympic games or other (mainly) sport-events where the demands on the data/voice networks are high.

I am convinced that HAPs will be common in a not so distant future, and it’s a shame that the swedish authorities aren’t putting in more effort in a technology that actually can maintain Sweden’s position as a “country in the technological front”. Instead, plans are made to manufacture a unmanned weapons-system, something that most likely won’t be used by a broad mass of people, and will be very expensive to develop with a (realistically) low chance of ROI (return of investment).

Swedish/Finnish telecom company TeliaSonera launched a TV via GPRS earlier this year, where you via your GSM (2G) or UMTS (3G) can see either news from Swedish channel TV4 (for free until the last of August), music videos and interactivity from The Voice or entertainment channel Star!.

I wasn’t really wild over this service at the start, mostly because of the fact that I didn’t appreciate the small screen and hacked up streaming that the news broadcasts from TV4 had to offer, but then something happened in my mind; I started to look at these newsbroadcasts in my Sony Ericsson K700i as radio with images – and I started to appreciate the service. It’s actually very handy when being on the bus, train… or having dead-moments in general.

Though, I don’t think I’ll pay around 1€ per clip or whatever the cost will be when the try-for-free offer is over. I mean, ok – it’s a nice service, but the quality offered isn’t worth the extra cost to get these chopped up sequences for. Then I’d rather listen to the radio for free.

If TeliaSonera creates a fair cost for all of the above, and add more content, well… then I’d be willing to pay an extra fee per month to obtain these services. If they bake in free GPRS-access to this as well, like 3G-operator “3″ has done, then this is something very attractive, which will bring TeliaSonera new customers.

A sidenote; Whoever is doing the branding for TeliaSonera in Sweden really should be fired – the company has NO profile whatsoever.

Hate is such a strong word, I agree – I guess I just wrote that one down for shock-value!

But in all seriousness, what is the use of having a laptop, aka a portable computer, when you can’t use it when you are out in the sun? (anyone ever tried to work outside under the sun knows what I’m talking about)

It really bugs me that I can’t go out in the sun with my Dell, just because I can’t see squat of what is on the screen, thus making the mission of working outside impossible.

Same thing with mobile phones. Ok, they’ve gotten better these later years – the mobiles with colourscreen that is, but they are still not a pleasure to use when under the sun.

Anywho, I just wanted to get this off my chest!

See you next time…