Last updated on September 25, 2007
This week’s 4cast:
1. The Landline is Dead; Long Live the Cellphone
More and more people, especially the younger set, are ditching their telephone landlines and relying exclusively on cellphones. Big business is in hot pursuit of this audience, particularly when it comes to cellphone-delivered Web services.
- Trend Sees Cell Phone Only Use Growing (Wired News)
- Big Money in Little Screens (New York Times)
- 49 percent of movers ditch landline services (Ars Technica)
- Landline Holders Increasingly Older, More Affluent (Slashdot)
2. It’s a Smaller World, After All
While cellphones become more ubiquitous and feature-laden, the computer industry is also making laptop computers smaller and more portable, by replacing traditional, fragile hard drives with durable flash memory (already widely used in USB memory sticks).
- Small and Smaller (New York Times)
- Study predicts majority of laptops to have Flash drives by 2009 (Ars Technica)
- Dell brings solid state to Latitude (InfoWorld)
- Rethinking Classroom Laptops (doug’s dirt)
3. Meanwhile, Out Yonder
Wireless broadband access is all well and good if you live in an urban area, but what are your options if the “last mile” is actually a hundred miles? Satellite, television, and power companies may each eventually play a role.
- With liberty and 100 megabit/second broadband for all (Ars Technica)
- Satellite Internet a lifeline for rural areas (CNN)
- War over “white space” continues (LLFCC)
- Broadband Over Power Lines Gets a Boost (PC World)
4. To Ubuntu or Not to Ubuntu?
If your library is looking to save some bucks on PC operating systems, you might be interested in installing Ubuntu, the free, Linux-based operating system that’s poised for more widespread adoption. Jessamyn West (librarian.net) recently tried it out at her rural library in Vermont.
- do you ubuntu? (librarian.net)
- ubuntu follow-up, explanations and links (librarian.net)
- Install and run Ubuntu without disturbing Windows (Lifehacker)
- Ubuntu Ohio: Ohio Local Community Team (Ubuntu)
