"The City of Corpus Christi, Texas, will deploy Wi-Fi system for use by the city-owned water and gas utilities, public works departments, and public safety agencies.

The Tropos Wi-Fi system will provide an automated gas and water meter reading twice per day from all meters in the coverage area. By eliminating the need for utility personnel to visit each meter and manually record customer consumption, the city can more quickly and accurately provide up-to-date billing information to their service recipients. Moreover, customers can access real-time usage data through a Web-based billing and information system automatically updated with each wireless meter polling.

The network will also be available for use by city public works crews, as well as Police and Fire Departments. The city plans to operate GPS-based asset and vehicle tracking applications over the Wi-Fi network, increasing both officer and community safety." Via We make money not art

This looks very similar to a business I was looking at about one year ago and thought it was a very compelling idea. All those Wi-Fi meters would literally have created a blanket of connectivity over the city... Gas & Water meter reading plus wireless connectivity for laptops and Wi-Fi enabled phones. Apparently quite a few other VCs thought it was compelling as well...

If anyone is interested in underground tech events in Spain, you might want to check out this event in August. (Via Smartmobs)

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, "All five of the major music companies are discussing ways to boost the price of single-song downloads on hot releases -- to anywhere from $1.25 to as much as $2.49."

Part of the large percentage of music sales on CD is the retailer's cut. Apple is making razor thin margins selling music, while the music studios are maintaining their margins. Now, they want to increase prices? (not Apple, mind you.)

Ok, let's assume this is fair. I'm all for supporting artists. So, how do they propose to do this?

"One option under consideration is bundling hit songs with less-desirable tracks."

That's exactly why buying a single online is a good idea- you get to separate the wheat from the chaff. Artists should not be rewarded for producing mediocre work. If it's good, I'll buy it. If it stinks, I'll get the single. Bundling as a countermeasure for poor music is revolting and the main reason people prefer to "steal" a single instead of paying $17.95 for one good song and 12 filler tracks.

Here's another insightful quote: "Revenues in the music industry have been dragging in recent years, in part because of the rise of illegal downloading services." Plus around a 20% drop in new music released. They kind of forgot to mention that part.

This is amazing. I think I'm going to start illegally acquiring all of my music, and then send the artist a check ranging from $1-$10. Just cut the music industry right out of the picture (like Prince is doing). The music industry makes me that sick...

Hopefully computerized music production will turn the Music Industry on its head shortly. The infrastructure is too large and expensive to support. Take a look at Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig , and read the part about book publishers in London back in the 18th century. Today's music industry is just as twisted.

"Massachusetts remains the state best positioned to take advantage of a high-technology economy, while Mississippi lags the rest of the nation, according to a new study released on Wednesday." Reuters

When you see reports like this, it's not too difficult to understand why I, like many of my friends, have left our native home of Mississippi (for London, New York and Washington, just to name a few). There was a related article in the Washington Post last November "Brain-Gain Cities Attract Educated Young" (sorry, I don't have the link) that discussed the brain-drain to more vibrant cities. It's not just Mississippi's problem, this is a "winner takes all" situation where network effects quickly take over, leaving only a handful of competitive cities.

Similar patterns exist in Europe as well- Madrid is becoming *the* hub of Spain, doing business anywhere else just doesn't make sense. And London is full of Spaniards, Italians, Germans, the odd American, etc.

I would like to see this same report on a global scale. Where would India rank? and China?

[Update]
While listening to a home-town favorite of mine, King Edward, I realized ranking Mississippi as a Tech state plays directly to it's weaknesses. If there were a ranking based on artistic contribution, where would Mississippi rank? Off the top of my head a few Mississippi artists include:

Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Jim Henson, Robert Johnson, Lee Ann Rimes, Faith Hill

Elvis Presley alone rockets MS to the top, but blues legends Robert Johnson and B.B. King too? At least Mississippi should get some credit where credit is due.

Well, Steve Jobs is having a really good day.

First, Apple is now debt free, although I'm not so sure that's a good thing.

And Napster, the number 2 music download service, is having serious problems. Napster's deal with HP fell through (just before they announced a deal with Apple), has lost $15 million over the past two months and has lost key board members and seniors executives. As Steve Jobs said "there's no money in the download business." It's a loss leader, period. (And a loss generating machine if you are Napster.)

The Sony Ericsson T610 is an outstanding phone. Especially if you are a Mac user.

I picked up a new T610 this week at Vodafone in Spain (more details on Vodafone's pathetic Live! service later), and I have been impressed time and again by this little wonder.

What's Great About the T610

First, as a counter point to MobileBurn, you CAN read the screen in broad daylight. I've tested it at 12:00 in sunny Spain, and trust me, if I can see it in on a sunny day in Barcelona, you can see it where you live. (It appears they have updated the article saying you can read the screen. Be sure to use a high contrast theme. I think an iPod UI theme would be ideal, if anyone knows where I could get one, drop me a line).

The phone has predictive text EVERYWHERE, not like the Nokia 7650. Also, you can switch between input languages mid-sentence (very handy for my Spanglish messages).

iSync works like a charm. Both to and from the T610. All new entries on the phone are placed in the calendar of your choice, but if you modify an entry on the phone, it is modified in its "calendar" in iCal. All new entries created on the phone are placed into to one "calendar" defined in iSync preferences. Ideal.

Alarms transfer over from iCal perfectly.

You can even set the phone to go into "meeting mode" automatically whenever you have an appointment in your calendar. No more embarrassing phone calls during an important meeting.

The audio quality is much better than my old Ericsson T29. Many sites have stated that the reception is poor, however I can hear (and be heard) better with the T610 than before (on the Vodafone Spain GSM network).

What's Not So Great About the T610

- The first day Bluetooth file transfer didn't work. (I'm using a Conceptronic dongle, and this seems to work fine now).

- SMS sent aren't saved to "Sent" items when sent using the bluetooth link-up between Address Book and the T610 (where you select the person you want to send an SMS to in the Address Book, type it on your Mac, then hit "send" to send the SMS through your phone)

- Cannot get .mac mail to send correctly (this is because Vodafone appears to be blocking port 25)

- Only one user definable "hot key"- there are THREE buttons to get me on the internet. I wish I could make one Internet, one Mail, and one Calendar.

- As stated elsewhere the screen gets lots of fingerprints on it. Not such a big deal.

- Day View is great. Unfortunately you see ALL of your To-Do list, not just To-Do's for that day.

- "All day" events are not copied from iCal to the phone. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next iCal revision.

- Physical addresses are not copied over from Address Book, only phone numbers and emails.

-The internal camera picture quality is quite poor at night as you can see from the photo below.



Overall, it's a great phone. It packs a lot of punch for it's size and hopefully there will be updates to address some of the software shortcomings, but overall this phone is highly recommended.

[Update]

I've been using the phone for over a month now and have noticed a few new things:

1. Email. I can send and receive correctly, but cannot configure the client to show me WHO is sending the mail- you can only see the message Subject, not the Sender (you have to retrieve the message to get that info).

2. Addresses. There are none. I was very disturbed to find that physical address information is not transferred over with a contact's details. I was luckily enough to discover this one day on my way to a meeting. I could remember what floor I was going to, so I didn't show up late for my meeting...but be warned (Work around- put the address in the "Notes" section of an iCal appointment or in the appointment itself. This should not have to be done though.)

3. Ringtones/Alarms. You simply CANNOT hear them. Polyphonic ring-tones may sound great- but they simply do not cut through loud environment noise i.e. bars, buses and metro stations. Unless you feel the vibrating ring, many times you will miss calls.

4. Size/weight. Continues to impress me. I actually thought I had lost the phone the other day (it was still in my pocket, but I couldn't feel it)

5. Battery Life. Seems to be pretty good 3-4 days of standby. 1-2 of medium use.

6. Alarms. Recurring alarm feature is great. Set the alarm for 6:00AM check off M-F and then turn it off for Sat. and Sun. Great time saver and life saver- never sleep in again (the alarm IS quite loud...especially in a silent bedroom.)