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Worker adjusting the wireless access point outside my window.

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The PF HYPER Blog

Saturday, May 30, 2009
 
Tumb, tumbling away
pfhyper started a tumblr blog. I think I'll use it to store links where I want to say more than 140 characters (the twitter limit). Plus Twitter doesn't archive well yet. We don't really know if our early tweets are in a database somewhere or not.

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:30 AM |
 
Minneapolis Unwired: Dead zones & IOUs (plus a Wi-Fi in the parks update)
Steve Alexander has a report on the Minneapolis Wi-Fi deployment at the Star Tribune. Judging from the dates on the comments, I think it's from May 26 but there's no dateline on the story.

The gist is that it's not done which is also the ongoing mantra. "It's always something" as Gilda would say. Prospect Park is still a "challenge" area and there are others around the metro--a total of three square miles still unwired. The park issue I reported on before seems to be resolved and a contract is in place with a bit of money changing hands from US Internet to the Park Board. (Read details over at the eDemocracy Forum).

The City of Minneapolis is using only $50,000 worth of services but paying $1.25 million per year. The article says the money carries over (an IOU so to speak) so supposedly we will get full value eventually. Some reasons we aren't getting full value now are because the network needs to actually be complete before Police and Fire will mess with it and because some City departments are slow in adopting the service.

Alexander talks about using the network to track video from a police car going 80mph. I would love to know how that is possible. I don't think the current network, in areas where it is fully implemented, allows you to smoothly travel from node to node in a car without losing the connection some of the time. So do we have a "special" high-speed backend network for police and fire? I know there is a "public safety" channel or something but if it's still in the Wi-Fi range, it would be subject to all kinds of interference.

US Internet meanwhile says they now have 14,000 subscribers. Those numbers should eventually translate to cash infusions in the City's Digital Inclusion Fund with a minimum of 5% of net pretax income. The fund has $100,000 left of the initial $500,000 from US Internet. The fund and the money are part of the Community Benefits Agreement in the contract. I'm on the Digital Inclusion Fund Committee and so far we have not heard when we will receive more money and we have postponed this years grant-making cycle.

We are still the muni-wi-fi poster child of the world. It's working here because the City of Minneapolis signed on as anchor tenant and is paying a hefty fee to support a network. However, unless the City starts to get its money's worth of services soon, we may have rethink this poster child status.

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- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:08 AM |
Friday, May 22, 2009
 
"Minnesota's Greatest Generation"Opens Saturday
Minnesota's Greatest Generation: Northwest Airlines

The Minnesota's Greatest Generation Project started in 2005, marking the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII. The capstone of the project is the Minnesota's Greatest Generation Exhibit that opens Saturday, May 22, at the Minnesota History Center.

Thursday was Media Preview Day and in addition to inviting the known press, the Minnesota Historical Society also invited the local blogger crowd and even called the last hour of the preview a "blogger exclusive." Nice idea although I may have been the only actual blogger to show. I think the scheduling had something to do with that; they held the preview from 10 am to 1 on Thursday. I'm lucky that I have a flexible "real job" work schedule.

Since the invitation stressed the intergenerational aspect of the exhibit, I invited my 11-year-old grandson to join me. Robbie was a great choice and he really enjoyed the exhibit. He brought a notebook and took notes. Joe Hoover, a member of the Historical Society Web Team, was our guide.

The Greatest Generation preceded the Baby Boomer generation. I'm a baby boomer and I was born in the last section of the exhibit, the boom years, where you find all the TV sets. The exhibit itself, all 6,000 square feet, is laid out chronologically starting with the Depression years, then WWII, and then the boom years. There is lots to see and hear.

Minnesota's Greatest Generation: MovieSome of the highlights of our visit were the 1930s movie theater illusion that makes you think you are in a movie theater with rows and rows of seats, the bullet-packing assembly line, and the C-47 troop transport simulated flight into Europe on D-Day with enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns firing away. They also have a soda fountain from the 30s which was the "social web" for that generation.

You can listen to many recorded stories as you wander through the exhibit and you can chat to a couple of folks who lived during the time: Frederick McKinley Jones and Virginia Hope. Frederick (1892-1961) was a self-taught engineer and inventor who held over sixty patents. He invented the cooling system to preserve foods for long-distance transport via trucks which was the beginning of the Thermo King Corporation. He was black.

Virginia was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). These women were the military stateside flyers during World War II, freeing the men for combat. They learned to fly many different types of planes. After the War, they were discharged and it wasn't until 1977 that they were granted veteran status which allowed them to receive benefits.

Make sure to chat with Frederick and Virginia when you visit the exhibit.

There is much, much more. Check out my photos. Check the web site. Get over to St. Paul and see for yourself.

Minnesota's Greatest Generation: Soda fountain



- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:30 PM |
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
 
Can Computers Take Advantage of Ultra-High-Speed Bandwidth?
Christopher Mitchell is Research Associate over at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization that (among other things) supports democratic access to airwaves and wires. I've asked Christopher to post on broadband issues. I hope this won't be the last you see of him here. You can reach Christopher at christopher@newrules.org.


Can Computers Take Advantage of Ultra-High-Speed Bandwidth?
Christopher Mitchell

During discussions about the need for ultra-high-speed bandwidth in communities around Minnesota, some have suggested that many people have computers that cannot take advantage of these faster connections. This has happened before the Governor’s Task Force as well as Committees in the Legislature. One person even suggested that some computers cannot take advantage of speeds beyond 5 megabits/second.

This claim is not only inaccurate; it reveals a flawed understanding of how Internet connections are used in the modern household.

Modern families frequently have multiple devices competing for bandwidth and sharing a single connection, including hand-held Wi-Fi devices, multiple computers and gaming machines and — starting this year — televisions and TiVos downloading content directly from the Internet.

To illustrate: Mom may be checking into the office remotely via VPN, Dad may be uploading video from yesterday's little league baseball game, Suzy is watching a lecture from Stanford for college credit, Tom is on a vidchat with friends, and grandma is checking in with her doctor.

A home office user may sometimes need very fast speeds to transfer large files to co-workers or to rapidly backup large amounts of data. Vendors could provide Ultra-High-Speed networks with bandwidth on demand allowing a user to purchase a 50Mbps connection during the hours from 8-noon and have a more modest connection otherwise.

Fast Internet connections will not be forced upon those who have no use for them. However, communities increasingly have businesses and power users demanding faster connections at affordable prices.

Thus, the argument that communities do not need these connections because some have computers unable to use them is at best irrelevant. But it is also inaccurate.

Ten years ago, computer motherboards had a standard Ethernet jack providing at least 10Mbps speeds. Thus, if someone is using a computer that was purchased within the last 10 years, we can be confident that the computer, at a minimum, can handle a 10Mbps connection. If it cannot, a $20 network card will solve that problem.

The 10/100 network cards (which connect to networks running both at 10Mbps and 100Mbps) were available ten years ago but did not become a standard on most PCs until around 2002-3. Nine years ago, the iMac offered a standard 10/100 port, meaning that any Mac purchased within the previous nine years will almost definitely support 100Mbps speeds.

If I had to guess, I would suspect that at least 95% of computers used today have been purchased within the previous ten years. Nearly all of those computers will have a 10/100 network port built in, allowing them to take advantage of up to 100Mbps. But even faster network speeds have long been available — the University of Minnesota has connected devices to its network at 1000Mbps (1 Gigabit/second) since 2004.

A few months ago, I purchased a refurbished laptop from Dell. For $1000, I received a laptop that came with 1Gbps networking capabilities.

Though most computers today may not have the ultra-high-speed capability of my laptop, we must keep in mind that it will take several years — under the most optimistic schedule imaginable — before these speeds are available to homes. By that time, computers will have commonly supported 100Mbps or faster speeds for many years.

What we call ultra-high-speed networks are becoming commonplace in parts of Europe and Asia. Our computers are not the limiting factor, the high cost and limited returns of building these faster networks is the issue.

Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. His e-mail address is christopher@ilsr.org

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:26 AM |
Sunday, March 01, 2009
 
2008 Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Awards
I sit on the Digital Inclusion Advisory Committee and we finished another award cycle last year that I never blogged about. (Here's a search link where you can read more about the Committee and my involvement.) I'm doing a presentation on digital inclusion this week at the U for a journalism class so I thought I should at least get this information online here. (In my defense, I did Twitter the awards back in December.)

We have away $200,000 for the second year. We have $100,000 left. According to the US Internet Wireless (USIW) contract, USIW will continue funding with a minimum of 5% of net pretax income. When the Digital Inclusion fund will see this money is not clear. There are other benefits too including free accounts for nonprofits. The City convened a work group last summer to look at some of these and how to proceed. I sat at the table with that group too and we finished meetings in the summer. We are still waiting for the applications for free accounts. Hopefully this will move forward soon.

Without further ado, here are the 2008 awards:

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 2:11 PM |
Saturday, February 07, 2009
 
Upcoming: PFHyper presents New Times New Tech
I will be presenting at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits 2009 Nonprofit Tech & Communications Conference (New Times New Tech) on Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.

The title of my session is Using the Collaborative Internet for Engaging the Public in Policy & Planning and it will run from 10:30 to 11:45.

Here's the description:
Join your peers to share Web and social media strategies and techniques for involving members of groups, teams, organizations, and various stakeholders, including the public at large, in problem definition, policy or plan formulation, decision making, and implementation. Various tools will be considered for their usefulness in citizen engagement including blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Google and other social media and collaborative tools. This is not a primer but a group discussion about what's working for you today, what's working for your colleagues, and what you see in the future. Join this discussion to share and discover potential tools to try out, and gain a better understanding of the networked public sphere.
How the hell do we use all these wonderful tools to get our work done in terms of working with our internal groups and engaging stakeholders outside of our organizations? As noted, this will be a group discussion and I hope to learn more than any of you about how you have been using the web and internet in these processes. Is Facebook the answer? Should we just give up on the fancy tools and use email with all its spam and management difficulties? Or should we just drop email and Facebook and move everyone over to Twitter (or Friendfeed or Plaxo or NextGreatThing)?

What I want to find out from you is what's working. Where do you feel that you have some quantifiable success in enhancing your group work process with a collaborative tool. Or at least some glimmer of hope that we are all on the right path. Share with us whatever smart and promising practices that help with group process. Let's hear your stories as to what's working and what's not working and some dashes of humor as we go along would be lovely.

I told a friend about this workshop and she immediately jumped to the concept of lobbying and attempting to influence legislators. While lobbying will likely be part of any policy implementation plan, I want this workshop to look at how we can work as a team over the net to start right at the problem defining itself and move through planning, decision-making, and implementing.

I also want to talk about controlling messages and collaboration. Can you open up social media in your organization and trust everyone to act responsibly? Will social collaboration be successful if you try to control all signals or does that rub too much against the grain of the social media concept itself? Can you just let everyone Twitter and Facebook and hope for the best?

So I am hoping you will want to join me on February 20 at 10:30 and that we will all have a lively, friendly, and respectful discussion. I'd love to see comments here at the blog on your ideas for shaping the presentation! Whether you get to my show or not, stop me and introduce yourself if you see me wandering the halls.

My first draft of slides is up at Google docs. Although the first screen makes you think you must log-in, look center and down for the direct link to the slides with no authentication.

My slides from last year's presentation are at Slideshare.

MCN is also twittering conference information as @SmartNonprofits.

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 1:29 PM |
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
 
Minneapolis Unwired: Park Board decides to throw its weight around
This is a follow-up to my last post about Wi-Fi in the Minneapolis parks.

Brandt Williams at Minneapolis Public Radio has an excellent update (Jan. 9) that covers the parks issue along with the issue with "dark" areas (where Wi-Fi won't work) which is limiting the usefulness of the network to the City of Minneapolis which is paying $1 million a year for a current service level worth $50,000.

Park Board Commissioner Scott Vreeland is interviewed in the piece and says that he is "not aware of any staff that knew about it.... It certainly wasn't brought to the commissioners." Scott, Wi-Fi in the parks has been discussed from the beginning of the implementation and it's part of the contract. What you are telling me here is that our Park Board Commissioners ignore anything that isn't officially presented to them to the point of now causing considerable delay in the full use of the Wi-Fi network here in Minneapolis and costing the City a significant amount of money. Thanks.

So the City makes a formal request and the Park Board turns it down "pending further study."

And by the way, I'm pretty sure we're talking free Wi-Fi in the parks. So the Park Board resistance is also holding back a valuable service for residents. Thanks again.

I hope this issue is raised as the campaigns for Park Board Commissioners gear up. I've talked about the Park Board before relating to the Red Bull bike route blockage. Our park system in Minneapolis is one of our most important assets and I want elected representatives who are paying attention to who they are representing.

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 8:19 AM |
Thursday, January 08, 2009
 
Everyone welcome! Seward Co-op (re)opens today!

[Update: Photos of the Ribbon-Cutting]

Seward Co-op's new sign, Dec. 14, 2009



It's been a long time coming and loads of work (including a lot of financial twists and turns to secure the money) but today the newly built and designed Seward Co-op will rise up on the ashes of the old Riverside Market. (OK. I exaggerated that ashes part but this is the site of the old Riverside Market which was a grocery fixture in Seward Neighborhood.)


Seward Co-op Preview, Dec. 14, 2009
Cooking classroom


The ribbon-cutting is at 10 today. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is supposed to attend. I'm sure our Green CouncilMember Cam Gordon will be there. I will be there. Mary (the wife) will be there. My youngest grandson will be there. Will you be there? Probably not but make sure to drop by soon. I hope to have some pictures up today so you can vicariously relive the ribbon-cutting.

For now, you can check out the Seward Co-op web site, view my pictures from the preview day, and read a nice article by Deets man Ed Kohler. (Seward also has a Facebook page.)

Seward Co-op FTW!

Historical notes: Our family is very connected to the Co-op. Mary was an early employee and part of the collective management when we were still a worker's co-op. She was once known as the Seward Co-op Cheese Queen when she revamped the cheese display at the old store (where Welna Hardware currently resides). I served on the board of Seward Co-op during the transition from the Welna site to the current site and I was the editor and publisher of an early member newsletter called Whole Wheat News. I also organized my class at Minneapolis Community & Technical College to build a web site for the store and hosted it via my PF Hyper entity for several years. My daughter Hallie worked checkout at the Riverside Market and met her husband there while on-duty.

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 7:00 PM |

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