The Yonderist

All those who wander are not lost.

Tag: data

Four Tenets for a National Data Policy

2009-08-21

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Andy Kessler in op-ed on the 19 August 2009 Wall Street Journal assumes that AT&T killed the Google Voice app for the iPhone. Apple disagrees, but his essential point that Google Voice is feature-rich while current telephony is feature poor remains. His argument: AT&T is dying and it’s slowing us down as it goes. I’m not one for such grand rhetoric, but what I think is crucial is his argument that we need to do away with regulation of telephony and television, with the national communications policy altogether and focus on a National Data Policy with the following assumptions:

  • End phone exclusivity. Any device should work on any network. Data flows freely.
  • Transition away from “owning” airwaves. As we’ve seen with license-free bandwidth via Wi-Fi networking, we can share the airwaves without interfering with each other. Let new carriers emerge based on quality of service rather than spectrum owned. Cellphone coverage from huge cell towers will naturally migrate seamlessly into offices and even homes via Wi-Fi networking. No more dropped calls in the bathroom.
  • End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies. TV channels are like voice pipes, part of an era that is about to pass. A little competition for cable will help the transition to paying for shows instead of overpaying for little-watched networks. Competition brings de facto network neutrality and open access (if you don’t like one service blocking apps, use another), thus one less set of artificial rules to be gamed.
  • Encourage faster and faster data connections to our homes and phones. It should more than double every two years. To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011, 25 megabits in 2013 and 100 megabits in 2017. These data-connection speeds are technically doable today, with obsolete voice and video policy holding it back.

The “Digging into Data” Challenge

2009-07-12

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This looks like a terrific idea but it has a steep entry price. I could see UL putting something interesting together with a university in Canada or France focusing on our strength in Francophone studies, but there’s a lot of writing and negotiating to be done and I just don’t think we have the staff for it. Nevertheless, I am posting the link to the site here to encourage others and in case I change my mind:

The Digging into Data Challenge is an international grant competition sponsored by four leading research agencies, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from the United States, the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada.

What is the “challenge” we speak of? The idea behind the Digging into Data Challenge is to answer the question “what do you do with a million books?” Or a million pages of newspaper? Or a million photographs of artwork? That is, how does the notion of scale affect humanities and social science research? Now that scholars have access to huge repositories of digitized data — far more than they could read in a lifetime — what does that mean for research?

Applicants will form international teams from at least two of the participating countries. Winning teams will receive grants from two or more of the funding agencies and, one year later, will be invited to show off their work at a special conference. Our hope is that these projects will serve as exemplars to the field.

NASA Wants Help Archiving Braun’s Notes

2009-06-29

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From the Wired article:

NASA is taking the rare step of reaching out to the public for help. The space agency is looking for the best way to analyze and electronically catalog a precious collection of notes that chronicle the early history of the human space flight program.

“We’re looking for creative ways to get it out to the public,” said project manager Jason Crusan. “We don’t always do the best with putting out large sets of data like this.”

The notes are those of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the fist director of NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and are typed with copious hand written notes in the margin. According to the official request for information, NASA needs ideas on what format to use, how to index the notes and how to create a useful database.

Files on Augustin (HD)

2009-03-21

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/Guirard Photos

/Lightroom
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/Pictures
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        /2007           1271 - 1332
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            /-06-28     1874 - 1906
            /-07-18     1965 - 1989

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