Well, I’ve been scratching my head this week trying to find something useful and interesting to catalog on these pages. It’s been a busy week, so I have not had a chance to digest many of my RSS feeds…however, I just stumbed across this fascinating article. Broadband data service (up to 100Mb, which is really broadband, not the 200Kb that the FCC claims to be broadband) over natural gas pipelines! I am really hopeful that we’ll be able to solve the last mile problem. Cable access is good (and much more available than DSL), WiMax and ethernet over power lines are promising, but the more options we have, the more price pressures to keep data rates high and monthly fees low.

OK, this is highly cool…a real, working fuel cell car…read this article for information about Honda’s “real world” test of this vehicle in California…

Even if we can’t drop in to the local dealer and buy one, it’s appealing to know that the technology to do this is out there now; it’s a matter of tweaking the bugs and making it economically viable.

Saw an intriguing article last week, focusing on the development of a new security paradigm called “deperimeterization”. This is a term apparently coined by the Jericho Forum, and essentially describes a model where applications take a more proactive role to securing their own information and interactions, and rely less on the “wall & moat” model of today’s networks, with firewalls, DMZ’s, etc. The Jericho Forum envisions an environment where the “walls come tumbling down” and B2B, B2C, etc. interactions are done on open networks. Will it work? I sure don’t know, but the current model of security reminds me of the proverbial “Dutch Boy” with his finger in the dike, trying to hold back the network problem of the day. Read this article for an analysis, and be sure to read the Jericho Forum visioning white paper.

A popular question today is “how good is the wikipedia”? Can you really trust the information that you get from it? My own view is that it’s a reasonable compiliation, and generally speaking, folks do look at things and try to keep it on track. I find the technology entries to be consistently of higher quality that those of general knowledge, but I suspect that many of these articles are read and tweaked frequently. The Guardian newspaper in the UK has an interesting article where they had SME’s (subject matter experts) review a few entries. Check out what they said…

For those of you that subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, there’s a nice article in the subscriber access area about the pros/cons of podcasting lectures…

Interesting, short article in the NY Times (registration required) about the disconnected adults in the USA…the percentage of folks who are not Internet-connected has stayed roughtly the same between 2002 and 2005, despite the continued roar of technology all around us…