Archive for April, 2008

April 16th’s Eureka Reporter had a strange, vague article about the progress of alternate fiber efforts in Humboldt County. Strange, in that it comes at a time when there is no real exciting news. Vague in that it comes at a time when there is no real exciting news. What motivated the article at this time? Who knows.

I do know that there are several potential projects that will bring alternate fiber to the area by organizations other than AT&T. I also know that these projects are all still at the talking stage, that no one has made a commitment in dollars and until someone does, its vaporware.

I also know that AT&T, in spite of what they say in the article, has been building fiber along the Highway 36 corridor. But when or if they will complete the build is unknown especially given their statement in the ER.

When will this alternate fiber get done? When someone decides they can get a return on investment in a reasonable amount of time.

The Redwood Technology Consortium’s monthly meeting will feature Chinmaya Lewis from the County of Humboldt. He will give a thorough introduction to the County’s new publicly available online Geographical Information System (GIS). GIS allows you to create maps with layers of selected data. This is very cool technology but the interface can be a little confusing. Mr. Lewis should make it all clear for us.

The meeting is at the Humboldt Area Foundation Conference Room off of Indianola Cutoff at 5:30 PM.

Technorati Tags: GIS, maps, Redwood Technology Consortium

As noted here before, we upgraded the RTC web site a while back. In the process we installed a suite of modules called CiviCRM. They allow us to do a number of things for membership management. One of those we are starting to implement now: We will be building a list of tags (or keywords) of skills and associating those with RTC members. Then we’ll be able to allow users to search the member roster for people or companies that have specific tech skills.  This could be a big benefit for tech businesses and people looking for assistance. I don’t know of any other place in our region where such information can be found easily. The range of skills and services could be quite great. After announcing the service today we have received an impressive list ranging from graphic design to C++ programming to network management support.

Technorati Tags: RTC, tags, tech skills