WBZ reports a Cambridge company plans to begin testing self-driving cars in the South Boston Waterfront by the end of the year. But a company honcho cautions not to expect widespread use of the vehicle in Boston, because, you know:
Boston’s a city with some challenging weather and some complex traffic patterns.
Boston has loaded the source code for boston.gov on github, which means code writers can now rummage around and submit improvements to make the site work better.
City Hall says this makes Boston the first "major" US city to turn its Web site into an open-source project. Officials emphasize the code - based on open-source Drupal software - contains no sensitive data.
Intriguingly, github stats show a code contribution from Marty Walsh. OK, granted, just for the "readme" file.
Somebody's launched a distributed denial of service attack on Dyn, Inc., which provides DNS (basically site lookups) for a number of large providers, such as Twitter. Basically, the effect is as if your phone burped and wouldn't let you access your contacts and you'd have to look up all the people you want to call by hand. Read more.
Even as we still try to tame our human drivers, Boston will begin planning for cars that drive themselves - in a year-long effort that will include figuring out how to test "autonomous" cars on our centuries-old roads. Read more.
MIT Technology Review reports Keolis workers will soon test Android-based "smart glasses" that will let them do real-time lookups of important data or consult with colleagues remotely.
The glasses will be tested in several locations, including the large repair facility in Somerville and a smaller yard in Readville. If successful, even train drivers could one day be given pairs - to let them make emergency repairs while still on the tracks.
Industries have a life cycle just like humans . Like a person’s childhood, teenage years, adulthood and golden years, industries have distinct life stages. A local example is the Nantucket whaling industry. Let’s review the lifecycle.
1659: Nantucket settled.
1752: Start up stage. Whaling voyages begin. The market for clean burning whale oil is small but growing. Industry profits are negative and large amounts of capital are required to build ships and train mariners.
1760-1789: Growth stage. In this stage capital requirements are still high, but sales grow rapidly and profits are positive.
Verizon and city officials said tonight that if they reach agreement on a cable contract, the company will roll out its FiOS service to four Boston neighborhoods using its traditional fiber-optic cables right to people's homes or buildings. Read more.
Xconomy reports the stock price for Cambridge-based Seres Therapeutics is dropping like a rock on news that its novel attempt to treat an increasingly antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria didn't seem to work much better than a placebo. Read more.
The Boston Business Journal reports the Milk Street Cafe is using a 3D printer to spritz out latte foam.
City officials and Verizon reps hold a meeting next week on the $300 million deal that's supposed to usher Boston into the next generation of communications greatness, or at the least provide an alternative to Comcast in the roughly 70% of the city not already served by RCN. Read more.
New Boston Web site on a laptop.
Boston unveiled its new city Web site today at boston.gov (if you go to the old cityofboston.gov, you'll be redirected, or should be). Gone is the clutter of the old site. In fact, as you can see from the home-page, there's a whole lot of nothing there, unless you like staring at a blue version of the lagoon in the Public Garden.
That's because the designers are obviously going for the phone-on-the-go demographic rather than us decrepit old Miltons on clunky desktops down in Storage B. Read more.
CommonWealth Magazine reports Harvard is now thinking even bigger: It's looking to turn the wastelands into the next Kendall Square - a large "innovation zone." But:
The real question is whether Harvard, a buttoned-down institution known for trying to control everything, can stand the chaos that innovation entails. Those who have studied innovation clusters say there is no guidebook, that Harvard is setting in motion a process it cannot control.
Initial Verizon FiOS service areas in Boston in pink.
Verizon has filed updated plans with the city for its roll out of FiOS Internet, phone and cable service that show that West Roxbury and parts of neighboring Roslindale, most of Dorchester, the area around Dudley Square, would be the first areas in the city to get the Comcast competitor. Read more.
The Boston Business Journal reports a Google acquisition on the West Coast could mean good news for people who want yet another alternative to Comcast. Google snapped up Webpass, a San Francisco Internet provider that already has a beachhead in Boston for its gigabit-speed Internet service.
I normally would not quote two articles from the Huffington Post, but they are Boston specific and make a ton of sense to me.
I've been trying to figure out this whole FiOS rollout in Boston. There has to be a sweet deal in there for Verizon for them to re-neg on years of telling the city, "No, no FiOS for you". Now I have the smoking gun. Read more.
Last month, a Green Line rider gained some measure of notoriety - and the disapproval of police - when he was spotted wearing virtual-reality goggles on a C trolley.
This afternoon, Mike the roving UHub photographer spotted him just walking down Beacon Street in Brookline, which for us non-VR types raises the question of whether you can actually see through the goggles or if hes perhaps using them to navigate via a live feed from a camera mounted on the goggles.
V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who says he invented e-mail as a 14-year-old in 1978, is suing Gawker and its owner for at least $35 million, claiming articles in 2012 that questioned his claim got him fired as an MIT lecturer and that a follow-up in 2014 lost him paid speaking engagements and other jobs around the world. Read more.
A federal appeals court ruled today that people who download a newspaper's mobile app are "subscribers" even if they pay no fee for access and that that means a local man can continue to sue Gannett over information its USA Today app sent about him to a third-party company. Read more.
Mayor Walsh today announced a deal in which Verizon will spend $300 million to bring its FiOS fiber-optic cable/Internet service to Boston.
Under the deal, the company will also attach wireless modems to city street lights and utility poles to provide better 4G and eventually 5G services to its wireless customers. Read more.
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