Invisible Yet Necessary

As I am doing research on the interaction design issues with wireless networking, I have been particularly interested in seeing how the story with Fon will evolve. I first reported on Fon in October before they launched and I have seen that the movement was gaining some momentum even before being officially launched. but then, I figured out that the solution they were offering was not that novel — Robert Cringely reports on a micro franchisee business model that looks pretty similar — . Experts in the field of wireless and broadband were questioning it too (see Om Malik, Glenn Fleishman).

Now that Fon has get major financial backing by company like Google or Skype, this changes the situation. Not only are they getting money but also a lot of free marketing with nearly any major publications talking about Fon. Glenn and OM Malik have posted a nice update on the situation.

I believe that we need to come up with a solution to offer an unified and enriched user experience in regard to wireless networking. The question that stands is not if it is going to happen (I believe it will) but how and when it will happen.

Fon has definitely an opportunity to get it right and has partners that can help it . But there are still major obstacles for it to become successful.

NETWORK SIZE IS NOT EQUAL TO VALUE

The number of hotspots is not directly linked to the value of the network. While Metcalfe’s Law

The value of a network equals approximately the square of the number of users of the system (n²) (Wikipedia)

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My position paper has been accepted for a second Workshop at CHI: IT@Home: Unraveling Complexities of Networked Devices in the Home .
I will present the interaction design side of my research on end-user networking and the issues and opportunities with multiple channels to access information.

• How can we move from a device (or connectivity) centered approach (for ex: using a mobile phone, TV or Wi-Fi ) to a activity centered approach (watching a video, accessing securly a bank statement)?
• How can we help turn network connectivity consumers into producers (similarly to what has been done in digital media for example)?
• How can we help users have an optimal unified experience despite technologies like DRM, network neutrality,….
• How do we design networking technologies to better account for information asymmetry or bounded rationality..

Related:

• Network neutrality and the state of broadband
• Spanish company, Fon, wants to let wireless internet users share their connection
• Ubicomp 2005 video: Yellow chairs
• Yahoo! Research Labs–Berkeley and SIMS Garage Cinema

My position paper “Public policy impact on interaction design in networked environments” has been accepted for the workshop organized by the SIGCHI US Public Policy Committee (SIGCHI is the Computer- Human Interaction special interest group (SIGCHI) of the ACM). I need to make some changes to the paper but it basically talks about the possible changes on the Internet infrastructure that could affect the end user experience.

Some of the topics worth discussing:

• Network neutrality (see previous post)
• How network neutrality (or the lack of it) would impact user experience with his activities online
• the opportunity to give more information about the network connection and more control to the user
• Do we need new laws and what should these laws say?

There has been a lot of talk about the state and the future of broadband Internet lately. Since I am looking into the design of ubiquitous systems for my research and the legal perspective, I looked at the concept of network neutrality and its possible impact on wireless network infrastructure design. This year, the US Congress will probably enact legislation about network neutrality that could change the way Internet is, and not just in the US. Because of that, there has been a lot of activity and discussion about what network neutrality should be and how it should be protected.
But first, what is network neutrality?

[Network neutrality] suggests that (1) to maximize human welfare, information networks ought be as neutral as possible between various uses or applications, and (2) if necessary, government ought to intervene to promote or preserve the neutrality of the network. (Wikipedia)

Network neutrality basically means that whatever content you want to transmit over the network, this content will be treated in the same way as any other content by the network infrastructure. The Internet was built on a the principle of best effort delivery, which means it can guarantee you that it will deliver your content but it will do its best.

Best-effort delivery describes a network service in which the network does not provide any special features that recover lost or corrupted packets. These services are instead provided by end systems (Linktionary)

The 2 concepts of network neutrality and best efforts are usually associated to a third concept: common carrier.

A common carrier is an organization that transports a product or service using its facilities, or those of other carriers, and offers its services to the general public. (Wikipedia)

The best example of common carrier are post offices. A post office usually pick up and deliver letters and packages regardless of their content (unless the content is deemed dangerous to transport).

When Internet took off, telephone companies were considered common carriers and will transport the traffic from and to their clients to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) that the client has chosen.

When dial-up was still prevalent:

1. The phone companies like BellSouth, Qwest or Verizon would provide the phone line (the “pipes”)
2. ISP like Earthlink or AOL will provide the Internet service on top of the phone line.

But with broadband technologies like DSL, phone companies could better control both the pipes and the service .

And this is where the problem lies.

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Co-creator of Blogger, author and software developer still finds time for Oregon blog directory

Blogger, MySpace, Facebook and Livejournal are words that have become popular on campuses around the country. Corvallis resident Paul Bausch contributed to the development of the technology that made blogs and social community a reality.

Bausch studied journalism at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. But he quickly got disillusioned by the broadcasting industry. He felt that local news was dictated by national agencies like The Associated Press and that only national events mattered. The role of local or campus news outlets was basically to republish whatever story was provided to them.

“Find a local angle and rewrite it … ,” said Bausch of his college journalism experience. “This was extremely discouraging to me.”

While working on his degree, Bausch also did programming on the side. After graduation, he moved to San Francisco to work for an e-commerce company. Not long after, two of his classmates asked him to become the first employee of Pyra Labs, the company they had just created. The company’s goal was to develop new project management tools. While the tool itself never found a sizeable audience, one of its components generated a lot of interest. The component was an application that will list notes in reverse chronological order. Pyra Labs decided to shift its focus to develop the component. Bausch, along with Pyra Labs co-founders Meg Hourihan and Evan Williams, ended up writing most of the code for the new application, a Weblog tool named Blogger.

Weblog was not a novelty by then and Bausch was already maintaining one to find connections with other people through the Internet. But Blogger would participate in the blog revolution by easing the process of creating and maintaining a blog. The Blogger service took off on its own and the usage exploded once the company started Blogspot, a hosting service for blogs.

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