It’s nice to see Kathy Sierra speaking at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 expo in Berlin .

The topic is interesting and I look forward to knowing more about creating passionate users ..
I am also speaking at this event on the impact of Mobile Web 2.0 on the Telco industry. If you are in Berlin next week, happy to meet. Please contact me at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

Outline of Kathy’s topic as below

What do game designers, neurobiologists, and filmmakers know about creating passionate users? How can we take better advantage of how the brain works to reach our users at a deep emotional level that inspires their enthusiasm and participation? The latest research in cognitive science, brain chemistry, and psychology can help you figure out how to get attention and keep it. We’ll look at how to work around the brain’s natural filters that keep your message from getting in. We’ll explore the techniques game developers use to keep users engaged and wanting more, and how these techniques can be applied to virtually any kind of communication. Most importantly, we’ll look at the lessons learned from the organizations and individuals who’ve succeeded at turning on the hearts and brains of their users. Whether you’re looking to drive up the hits on your web site, increase membership and involvement, or build a passionate “fan” base around your product, service, or cause, the answer lies in reverse engineering the things for which people are passionate, and finding ways to implement those same attributes in what we offer.
Speaker - Kathy Sierra

BT Openzone this week announced the launch of an international Wi-Fi travel voucher system, giving travelers access to a worldwide network for a fixed per-minute cost, 500 minutes for £28 (5.6p per minute) in the US and for £40 (8p per minute) in Europe.

“More than ever before, the building blocks are in place to provide widespread coverage and cheaper calls for those who want to call home or access the Internet when abroad using Wi-Fi,” says BT Openzone general manager Chris Bruce. “The international travel voucher makes business travel simple, convenient and hassle-free.”

The vouchers come in two versions. BT Openzone 500 Europe covers France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark — and BT Openzone Americas 500 covers the US, Canada, Brazil and Argentina. The biggest problem? The Europe voucher expires two weeks after the first login, and the US voucher gives you just seven days.

More here from ZDNet UK … more here from thinkbroadband … more here from IT Week … and the press release is here.

Its interesting that the Google OpenSocial story was broken by two bloggers(Arrington and Om Malik) and even the BBC coverage is largely composed of statements from bloggers (again Arrington and Malik).. As a blogger, that makes me happy

The Napa Valley Register's Kevin Courtney today reported that another muni Wi-Fi project has bit the dust.

“Plans to saturate the city of Napa with wireless Internet service, allowing computer-users to log on practically anywhere, have crashed,” Courtney writes. “The city and AT&T announced this week they are ending their partnership to make Napa a cutting-edge Wi-Fi community. AT&T had planned to invest more than $1 million in equipment and service.”

The fatal issue, apparently, wasn't cost - it was that the utility poles in Napa are too short: they don't leave enough room for Wi-Fi antennas. “This fatal deficiency wasn't known when Napa and AT&T inked their Wi-Fi agreement with much fanfare in February,” Courtney writes.

More here from the Associated Press.

Buffalo has announced a new AirStation Wireless-G MIMO Router claims to be the “first commercial wireless router to come with DD-WRT firmware pre-installed,” notes Engadget:
The WHR-HP-G54DD (WHR-HP-G54 pictured) is the first device to emerge from the firm’s partnership with NewMedia-NET (pdf). It features five QoS levels to prioritize traffic, optimized link state routing (OLSR), a […]

CTIA did a podcast to coincide with their cover story article “The Continental Divide.” You can listen to it by going here, then click on Conventions and expand Audio under CTIA Wireless IT & Entertainment 2007. The podcast is available under the heading “Global Mobile Markets: Does the US Measure Up?”
Yours truly appears on and off […]

Looks like Sprint has joined VZ and TMO in talks with Google regarding the Google phone. Om is reporting a Nov 13/18th announcement. My sources are also telling that product launch is imminent.

Boingo Wireless, which runs one of the world’s largest networks of Wi-Fi hotspots, today announced that it has acquired seven airport Wi-Fi networks from Sprint. Operations in all seven airports have been successfully converted to Boingo® hotspots.
tAccording to Boingo, this acquisition increases their airport hotspot network coverage and its Concourse subsidiary from 16 to 23, […]

A US Congressional committee voted today to add wireless mesh technology as a benchmark for underground communication and tracking systems, as part of amendments to new federal mine safety legislation.
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Education & Labor Committee voted to amend the S-MINER Act of 2007 to include wireless mesh technology as a communications and […]

Loral Space & Communications today announced the 3.25 billion acquisition of Telesat Canada by Loral and the Canadian-run Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) has been completed.
“Loral has transformed its regional fixed satellite services business into a 64 percent interest in the fourth largest FSS operator in the world,” said Michael Targoff, chief executive […]

Navigation devices maker Garmin spooked investors Wednesday with an unsolicited 2.3 billion euro ($3.3 billion) bid for Tele Atlas, the Dutch mapping company, currently considering an offer from rival device maker TomTom.
Garmin said it will offer $35.31 for a share of Tele Altas, 15% higher than the $30.63 TomTom offered in July and a 48% […]

The Interaction Design Association is putting on their first conference next February, and it looks to have a great program. It’s not a mobile conference, but Morten Hjerde (of Sender11 blog on mobile interaction design fame) will be speaking (and not about the iPhone).

Interaction 08

The AIR Camp Italy was a great success.
Enrique Duvos, Adobe Platform Evanglesist, made a wonderful job showing a lot of cool AIR examples and explaining the possibilities that AIR opens.
My speech was about the way you can create, export and deploy AIR Application using Dremaweaver CS 3 AIR exentsion, Flex Builder and Flash CS3.
I talked on the importance of the analysis and desing of a Rich Internet Application in Flex, AJAX or Flash. I showed some tecniques and some architecture to implement for the development of application in order to produce a clear, stable and more reusable ActionScript 3 code (ModelGlue, CairnGorm, some J2EE design patterns).

George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, painted a picture of a world without privacy, in
which government authorities, using a wide array of technologies, continuously monitored human
activity. The loss of privacy shaped society, enabling government to control all aspects of
people’s lives.
— ACLU: Under a Watchful Eye

Video surveillance has doubled in the last five years: It is […]

It seems that WalMart has backed off from its original tight plan on RFID because Carolyn Walton, VP of Information Technology for WalMart officially announced a dramatic change in the company´s strategy earlier this month. She said in the EPC Global conference on Oct. 5 that WalMart, from now on, is going to focus only on three lines of initiatives in respect to RFID:

1) Pallet tagging for a Sam's Club DC to test RFID-based putaway

2) Tagging of just products and dis-plays on promotion for the week, testing new “hot spot” reader networks in store to improve pro-motional execution

3) Tagging an entire category, start-ing with a test of air fresheners, to see if sales can be lifted through improved in-stocks.

Observers of the industry such as SC Digest believe that WalMart has come to an understanding that the more evolutionary approach of competitors like Tesco is more effective and so has adopted a similar strategy in contradiction to its original plan to enforce its suppliers to use RFID on the case level.

In my point of view, there is a business case for the current initiative compared to the earlier projects and specially if implemented well, WalMart will benefit a lot. What do you think?