A team of Redwood Technology Consortium members and helpers have put together a site that is designed to match people who have a need for temporary housing resulting from the fires in Southern Californa with people willing to put them up. The result of a brainstorm by Larry Goldberg the site went up within 24 hours of Larry soliciting for help on the RTC mailing list. Local developers Josh Koenig of ChapterThreeLLC, Matt Koglin...
The past couple months have seen a rash of news reports about failed Municipal Wi-Fi networks. Or at least attempts to build them. Philadelphia, San Francisco and smaller communities found the cost and the return on investment hard to figure out. And wi-fi providers have not lived up to their own hype. But according to this article, it’s a temporary setback. Communities are taking a step back and looking at more realistic models. But...
Blue Lake writer and web publisher Kevin Savetz has recently launched a new service for the blind. It’s a simple service that connects the blind with volunteer readers. The idea is that a blind person can fax in any piece of text or a scan and a volunteer reader will call them and read it to them. Here’s Kevin’s own description: Read This To Me is a free reading service for the blind, powered...
Thank goodness at&t revised its recently revised terms of service so that I can once again feel free to write critically about the company (and all of its associates which is what, over 50% of the businesses in the world?). Just in time, too since at&t just won a sweet decision from the FCC that says it is free to charge whatever it wants for broadband service. Here’s a juicy quote from the article:...
The Redwood Technology Consortium maintains a discussion mailing list that anyone can subscribe to whether you’re a member of RTC or not. Since the latest fiber outage there has been lots of heated discussion on the list, many people are saying, it’s about time we get this (alternate, redundant, ok second) fiber line built. What’s the hold up? Let’s “git ‘er done!” These are all great sentiments. But in fact the RTC has been...
Today’s fiber outage once again highlights both how dependent we are on Internet connectivity and how fragile that connection is. This is the fourth break in less than a year. AT&T’s microwave backup system is totally inadequate. Satellite service works for some as a back up system and others who can afford a redundant connection through 101netlink are fine. But neither of these solutions are capable of carrying the load for the whole region....
Last year I wrote a blog post praising PowerSchool, the online system for tracking your child’s progress and communicating with teachers that Eureka City School is running. This year, I went further and wrote a Tech Beat article for the Times-Standard. I would link to it, but the search tool on the Times-Standard web site is so bad it can’t find it (but that’s grist for another blog post, I guess). When the T-S...
Today was the “official” launch of a new four county (Humboldt, Mendocino, Del Norte and Trinity) broadband initiative now being called Redwood Coast Connect. The folks leading and funding (to the tune of $500,00) the initiative held a press conference today at the new Humboldt Bay Aquatic Center next to the Adorni Center in Eureka. The ultimate goal of the initiative is to bring ubiquitous broadband to the four county region. They plan to...
