Technology
There's an awesome website called SeeClickFix that I blogged about over at WestwoodBlog. It allows citizens to report potholes and other problems so the city can fix them. It's full of reports of potholes and general complaints about road conditions. It would be great if the "fixers" were watching it, but it appears they aren't. Read more
Mass. High Tech reports on a company called Tap 'n Tap that's building the "firmware" (think software etched into chips) for touchscreen tablets based on Google's Android platform - at a lower cost than their Apple equivalents.
Wade Roush interviews an exec at Brightcove, which makes online video players and servers and which is working with cable companies to embed the TV Everywhere standard, meant to ensure TV can't be seen everywhere: Read more
Leslie Rock, a Beacon Hill resident who pays AT&T roughly $30 a month to connect her iPhone to the Internet, today filed a class-action lawsuit in US District Court in Boston that charges the company is illegally collecting taxes on the service.
In her complaint, Rock seeks to establish a class of Massachusetts residents who, collectively, are owed $10 million because federal and state law prohibits taxes on Internet services. However, the suit also alleges these "thousands of individuals" are being charged both state and local sales tax on the service even though Massachusetts cities and towns have no local sales taxes.
Complete complaint.
Yes, silly, Lycos still exists, and it apparently holds some patents on basic search technology. ChoiceStream, a Cambridge company that sells software that lets Web sites make recommendations to visitors, today filed a federal lawsuit against the search pioneer, basically to head off the lawsuit it expects Lycos to file over its software. Read more
The Boston Business Journal reports on nine deals this week totaling $62 million.
BostInnovation counts 'em down.
The father of Ethernet is now a clean-tech venture capitalist - who thinks the answer is to find energy sources abundant enough to be "squanderable," Mass. High Tech reports:
... "When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail," he said. "I'm a networking guy so everything looks like a network to me."
Metcalfe believes the lessons learned building the Internet can be applied to the world's energy problems. Hence the controversial stance on consumption.
Boston will get $1.9 million to bring broadband to poor neighborhoods. The money will "provide upgraded and expanded hardware, software, and public computing training in 26 public libraries, 11 public housing developments, and 16 Centers for Youth and Families in Boston," according to a statement from John Kerry’s office. "In Boston, 80 percent of public school kids have no broadband service at home in large part because their parents cannot afford it, and that's why we pushed like hell to invest in broadband deployment through the stimulus bill."
Remember when the city said it would get poor people online by building out John Tobin's Tom Menino's citywide wireless system? No, neither do I.
Via Colin Rhinesmith.
Local hackers are downing reservoirs of coffee and mountains of pizza this weekend as they convene to play around with live MBTA bus-location data for the five routes the T has released the information for.
Mass. High Tech reports what an Evergreen Solar executive told investors last week.
NetView Technologies in Belmont today filed a patent lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging Microsoft owes it a spreadsheet worth of money for violating a NetView patent on how Excel can access information stored across a network. Read more
Xconomy pumps out the news on NormOxys, which is working on drugs it hopes can get red blood cells to release oxygen to O2-deprived tissue, such as the heart muscle of patients with congestive heart failure.
Creation of $1-billion companies over the past five years, according to Mass. High Tech: We have five, they have four. That still didn't stop one Mass. startup from moving west because:
Boston is great for singles or doubles, but if you want to shoot for the home run or strike out, it's better out West.
Google just launched new street view imagery taken by their camera equipped tricycle (the trike) which allows them to take pictures of areas not accessible by car. Along with Legoland, Seaworld, Hershey Park and other attractions, the trike visited BU. The older sun-soaked footage of BU, taken from Comm Ave has been removed. Read more
Pops posts photos from today's Boston Tech Day at the O'Bryant School.
MBTA Transit Police tweet the entire Boston area is "experiencing a rash of iPhone robberies," in particular, from people who are texting:
If you're texting, your focus is on phone, on surroundings. Thieves are watching for this and will grab phone while you're preoccupied.
Last night, one Orange Line rider reported a T cop told her not to use her cell phone on the Orange Line because of an outbreak of cell-phone robberies on that line.
Zipcar and Meadow Networks founder Robin Chase imagines a national, open-source wireless network built atop the millions of toll transponders and other wireless devices that already sit in people's cars.
Talking to an audience of developers working on Massachusetts transportation data, Chase said the government should use some of the billions of dollars now being invested in "smart grid" technologies to make far better use of the devices and networks already in place along the nation's highways.
Each of the devices could be turned into a mini wireless access point connected to highway networks that already access to create "a mesh network" for "wireless coast to coast," she said.
Right now, she said, your typical EZPass transponder is in use maybe 30 seconds a month - as commuters pass through toll plazas. "We have a device, we have a wireless network, and it is so under capacity," she said.
After falling far behind other areas during the boom years, Boston has been making up lost ground during the Great Recession. That, at least, according to a new study from the Milken Institute that ranks metropolitan areas by their success at creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth, with a heavy emphasis on technology. Read more
Take a look at what's on the slab at Boston Dynamics in Waltham (the robot wears tennis shoes!):
Via Benjamin Spear.
Wicked Local Cambridge reports Cambridge is working on a new employee policy that would ban workers from networks such as Facebook and YouTube while on the job.
An Israeli software company with an office in Waltham yesterday charged the way Google sends out updates for its Chrome Web browser violates its patent. Read more
Harlan E. Anderson, one of the co-founders of Digital Equipment Corp., is blogging about his life in computing, from the 1940s through the founding of the company that made Maynard famous.
Via Pito Salas.
History of the DEC logo.
Re-creating the Digital logo in PostScript.
Ask for the stenographic record of the last public meeting of Boston City Council http://www.cityofboston.gov/contact/?id=18 The stenographic machine records more of the proceedings, transactions and Councilors debate than the all too brief Council minutes.
Comcast thinks that its customers won't notice if it increases their monthly service charge by $2, if they call it an "equipment charge" increase rather than a service charge increase. They're increasing their revenue by $358 million per year without taking on any additional costs or providing any additional services. Consumers, fight back!
Please visit http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_sneaks_in_rate_increase_as_equipment_charge to read more and help me publicize Comcast's most recent attempt to cheat its customers.
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