Technology

Galaxy Internet Services, which runs Brookline's townwide WiFi network, charges the wireless system Google used as it took Street View photos collected data on at least one occasion from Brookline wireless users.

Standard Contract
City of Boston/County of Suffolk

Form CM 10 and 11
[Initialed]

()
( )

Contract No. C022546

Department - Invoice Mailing Address
Boston City Council
Boston City Hall, 5th Floor
One City Hall Plaza
Boston MA 02201

Service Location Address
Boston City Council
Boston City Hall, 5th Floor
One City Hall Plaza
Boston MA 02201

Contractor's Name and Address. Please Include Zip Code.
Ellen M. Fritch
Ellen M. Fritch & Associates
373 Silver Street
South Boston MA 02147

By 2008
Account 52913
Fund 100
Org 112100
Program 0000
Sub-Cl 0000
Project/Grant 0000
Amount

FIN or SSN 043101842
Vendor ID 000000000000066

Description of services for which City/County agrees to pay if rendered in accordance with the contract

Documents attached and/or incorporated by reference (continue on separate 8 1/2 " x 11" sheet(s) if necessary)

Term

Rob Sama reports he just got the following notification:

We can’t wait to bring you blazing-fast FiOS Internet and an overall experience that will blow you away! This e-mail confirms your revised installation appointment for Verizon FiOS Internet Service.

* Scheduled Installation Date – 08-31-2010

The agency that runs New York's mass transit encouraged Big Apple developers last week to "crush Boston" and develop more better apps for is transit riders. Bostinnovation reports today that Boston was one of five cities selected for Code for America, which "builds free applications aimed at improving U.S. city governments." One guess which city was not.

New York's equivalent of the MBTA has decided to open up its data to application developers so they can come up with all sorts of cool things. Where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah, when the MBTA announced similar plans last fall. MassDOT's Josh Robin reports from a developer meeting this week down in the Evil Empire:

Deputy US CTO for Open Government Noveck told the audience that she wanted the New York transit developer community to "Beat Boston." Instantaneously, "Beat Boston" became a theme of the panel, until Chairman Walder upped the ante, declaring that the New York developer community actually needed to "Crush Boston."

Hearing a chorus of "Beat Boston" speaks volumes about what the MassDOT Developer Community has accomplished since last summer. In just nine months, developers have built more than one dozen applications that help MBTA riders. Our shared success is quickly becoming the model for transit agencies as they think about how to provide real-time information to customers.

Joel Brown reports the owner of what's left of the once proud Cambridge company has donated tons of Polaroid equipment to MIT, including old SX-70 cameras (yes, people who grew up with those, you are now old):

... The collection includes every make and model of commercially produced Polaroid cameras, and myriad experimental models and prototypes that never made it to the marketplace. Potentially most interesting: sketchpads used by Land, who died in 1991. The museum plans to get Polaroid alums involved in cataloging the collection, and a major exhibit is under discussion. ...

Boston Peeps:

I'm writing to invite you to the Ford Hall Forum for a talk titled "The Emerging Fifth Estate - Can the likes of Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks help solve real government problems?"

The talk is this Thursday from 6:30 to 8:00 pm at the Main Function Room, Suffolk University Law School. Admission is Free.

No, not Chatroulette. Jennie White talks up a Boston-based startup called Sparkcloud that uses geolocation to connect you to people nearby who share your interests. There's even a "reputation" system built in to avoid the Chatroulette problem - if too many people mark you as a "creep," you're kicked off the system.

WBUR reports on the huge fine against the Cambridge company for the contamination, which forced it to stop production of two drugs critical to patients with Gaucher and Fabry disease. The tanks are normally filled with Chinese hamster ovary cells secreting the drugs; the company had to kill them, sterilize the tanks and start over.

Bloomberg, via the Times, reports Google could be about to spend $1 billion on ITA Software, a Kendall Square company that sells airline-scheduling applications - of the sort a giant search engine might need if it wanted to begin providing flight information for travelers.

Stephen Laniel, who once worked there, explains why the company could be worth that much: They're the only people who have really figured out how to get the cheapest fare from A to B (Orbitz, for one, is based on their software).

... ITA is sitting on the best kind of monopoly you can hope for: they've solved a problem that no one else can solve. ...

Survey says.

Jennie White describes a seven-month competition called MassChallenge to find startups on which to shower fabulous prizes. It's open to anybody in the world, but with a name like that, you can guess where it's based.

It's not every day you get to see a laser show at the Cambridge Public Library, but that is exactly the event that will kick off the 4th Annual Cambridge Science Festival.

The festival will run from April 24-May 2, 2010, with hundreds of events taking place throughout Cambridge. Organized by MIT, the festival will feature over 200 workshops, demonstrations, behind-the-scenes tours, talks, performances and more, open to the public, and almost all of it free. The idea behind the festival is to make science and technology accessible and fun for people of all ages and backgrounds. It all kicks off with a free Science Carnival featuring a specially commissioned laser show and 89 booths of fun experiments and demonstrations for all ages, Saturday, April 24th, 12pm-4pm, Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway. Laser show begins at Noon.

Other highlights of this year's festival include:

“Big Ideas for Busy People” on Festival Eve, April 23rd. This free event is a short series of talks on mind-bending concepts from leading local researchers in a variety of scientific fields.

IBEW fights with Verizon, Comcast/Xfinity over who gets to work on VoIP installations.

No more scenes like this: This morning outside the Apple store on Boylston Street.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports JP is one of the three communities in which NStar will swap in meters that let residents constantly monitor their electricity use - and alert them if they could save money by running their appliances at off-peak hours during certain times of the year.

So last weekend, Boston was inundated with video-game types for the Pax East convention at the Hynes. Among them lurked evil, in the form of Justin D. May, 20, of Delaware, allegedly caught downloading code from a game. According to Kotaku, when cornered by police, he offered them a $100 bribe. Needless to say, he failed to show up for his arraignment in court.

Via Bostonist.

Seems so to at least a couple of Verizon customers.

Dottie Hottie lists Dot spots with free WiFi for the laptop set.

Tesla sitting in front of the Mandarin Hotel on Boylston Street.

@oneforty, building Twitter app store, moving from #brighton to #CentralSq, Boston Business Journal reports http://bit.ly/bMKPmY.

Verizon is winding down its FiOS expansion, and guess which largest city in New England won't be getting any? So now Boston's pinning its hopes on Google to combat Comcast and RCN, only hasn't Google said it's more into the pilot-program sort of thing and wouldn't be wiring up an entire city anyway?

A pilot project to let private developers hook into real-time data from just five bus lines will be expanded to every route in the MBTA system, new General Manager Richard Davey said at a software developer's conference this evening, Samantha Hammar tweets.

Mass. High Tech reports the pitcher turned online game tycoon is looking to move his company from Maynard to Rhode Island.

from displaying the wrong time. They simply shut the date/time feature off. As witnessed at several Green Line stations on my commute this morning, the signs are now completely blank when they are not displaying a service or "nanny" message.

Of course, I always thought the date/time display was an unnecessary feature of these signs anyway.