Context & Continuity

TRAPEZE NETWORKS DEPLOYS CHINA’S LARGEST WI-FI NETWORK

6,500,000 Citizens Surf NonStop Wireless Network

Beijing, China, September 29, 2008 -- Trapeze Networks, a Belden brand, has won the Hangzhou Wi-Fi Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) project, the largest Wi-Fi MAN in China.  Trapeze Networks is deploying more than 3,000 access points in Hangzhou, allowing the city’s 6.5 million residents to enjoy the convenience and reliability of NonStop Wireless™ networking.

I tried to resist...

... blogging this bit of brilliance, but have succumbed.   So, in case you haven't read it yet...

So, in case you don't know the back story, Maureen Dowd once "dated" Aaron Sorkin.  Last week, Ms. Dowd asked Mr. Sorkin to write the dialogue between Mr. Barak Obama and President Jed Bartlet.  (Isn't this more than just a little bit like fanfic?)  Read on...

BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.

BARTLET Senator.

OBAMA Mr. President.

BARTLET You seem startled.

OBAMA I didn’t expect you to answer the door yourself.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s call it even.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET Come on in.

BARTLET leads OBAMA into his study.

BARTLET That was a hell of a convention.

OBAMA Thank you, I was proud of it.

BARTLET I meant the Republicans. The Us versus Them-a-thon. As a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don’t like small towns, God, people with jobs or America. I’ve been a little out of touch but is there a mandate that the vice president be skilled at field dressing a moose —

OBAMA Look —

BARTLET — and selling Air Force Two on eBay?

OBAMA Joke all you want, Mr. President, but it worked.

BARTLET Imagine my surprise. What can I do for you, kid?

OBAMA I’m interested in your advice.

BARTLET I can’t give it to you.

OBAMA Why not?

BARTLET I’m supporting McCain.

OBAMA Why?

BARTLET He’s promised to eradicate evil and that was always on my “to do” list.

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Press Release: WICHITA WINGNUTS WELCOME WIRELESS

Consumers Crave Cashless Concessions

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 22, 2008 – Trapeze Networks is the MVP player on a team that has built the first cashless professional sports stadium in the United States, Lawrence-Dumont Stadium, home of the Wichita Wingnuts. Other members of this winning line-up include Total Venue Control, Game Time Food & Beverage Services, EZ Pay and Renaissance Network Solutions. Working together, these companies created a turnkey solution that makes everything about baseball in Wichita a lot more fun.

 

Infoworld, 9.19.8: Wireless LAN standard to cut power use

The upcoming 802.11v standard will lower power consumption in wireless LANs, according to Matthew Gast, principal engineer at Trapeze Networks.

Work on the standard began early in 2004 and ratification is currently scheduled for March 2010. Features include a Wireless Network Management Sleep Mode, improvement on base 802.11 power savings and longer power-off times for 802.11 radios.

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Floyd Norris: Brilliant!

Floyd Norris is a business columnist for the NY Times and has a well-deserved reputation for being the sharpest pencil in the box.  In my professional life I've only had one encounter with him and, I'll tell you the truth, it's a heart-stopping moment for a public relations professional when he hears Floyd Norris is holding for you on line two.  In my case, I was working for 3Com at the time and we were in the process of spinning off Palm and had issued a tracking stock for the new company.  The tracking stock did Very Well, while the 3Com stock Wasn't Doing So Well.  In fact, the situation was that the valuation of the tracking stock compared to the performance of the 3Com stock indicated that 3Com was being valued less than the cash we had in the bank.  --And I hope that never happens to you. 

Our strategy was to hold our collective breaths and hope no one noticed and that worked out pretty well until one afternoon when I got the call from Floyd Norris.  The truth of the matter is that it was one of the easiest press inquiries I ever handled.  Mr. Norris asked me if he had done his math correctly and I affirmed he had.  Mr. Norris asked me what I thought about the situation and I told him that, on the record, we couldn't comment about the fairness of how the public values our stock.  Off the record, I told him I thought the situation was rather silly and he completely agreed with me and his column streeted on Saturday and the column said the situation was silly and that was that. 

In today's paper, Mr. Norris explains the Entire Economic Mess for us.  He explains it in simple terms that even I can understand.  I Highly Recommend that you read it. 

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UPCOMING 802.11v WIRELESS STANDARD “GREENS UP” WLAN

Trapeze Networks Engineer Tells InterOp New York How

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 19, 2008 – The coming IEEE 802.11v standard will introduce new power savings features that will “green up” wireless LANs.  This important advance will be explained at the InterOp New York conference by Matthew Gast, Trapeze Networks' principal engineer, office of the CTO, and the chair of Wi-Fi Alliance Wireless Network Management and Security Technical task groups.

Regarding the 2.1 Firmware Upgrade from Apple....

My dear friend who knows Far More about consumer electronics than I do wrote to me about his experience updating his iPod Touch with the 2.1 firmware.  This is what he had to say:

• Has the new iTunes 'Genius Playlist' feature ON the touch
  
• Performance seems a bit faster overall
• Backs up with iTunes MUCH faster
  
• Gets POP mail (Comcast, Yahoo, etc) MUCH faster and reads some Yahoo Groups mail that comes to my Comcast account MUCH better than before (sometimes used to show mail but not download the content)
  
• The LOCATION circle of where I am seems to be smaller and better positioned. I THINK they've improved the wi-fi accuracy quite a bit
  

I hope the iPhone fixes are as good as the touch ones appear to be!"

My own experience with the upgrade was very satisfactory.  My heart is always in my throat whenever I do a firmware upgrade of any kind due to my history of bricking gadgets of every stripe during similar operations.  (Nothing resembles a brick more than a bricked Newton.)  Anyhoo, after I worked through the usual panic attack, my iPhone surfaced quite nicely and, I guess, is running better.  Honestly, I don't notice much difference. 

I haven't written to you about my iPhone so I'll share these thoughts with you now:

1.  The UI is like ... something very sweet and delicious and probably bad for you.  Apple is without a peer when it comes to UI and the iPhone is spectacular.

2.  The apps ... while I liked the free market economy of Palm apps, I deeply respect how Apple is bringing the apps to users.  If I were a developer, I would be Very Grateful that Apple went out of its way to build this infrastructure. 

3.  Battery.  I've read various dings on the battery life, but my experience is this:  Because I use the phone so much more than an "ordinary" cell phone, the battery takes a bit of a hit.  What's really being described as dings on battery life are symptoms of how bloody useful the iPhone is.  I've installed fifty-one apps to my iPhone and I really do use most of them at least once a day.  eReader is a Very Strong eBook application.  Facebook is a great interface and I would argue better than the one on my screen.  I have my iPhone activesyncing with my company's Exchange server and gMail is onboard through IMAP.  (Please don't use POP for gMail because you deserve better than that and IMAP is just as easy to set up.)    This is my first location-based appliance and it has already saved my biscuits from burning on more than one occassion.  --So, yeah, I'm using it A Lot more than my previous cell phone.  Battery hit?  No surprise. 

4.  More about the apps.  I really appreciate the fact that Apple has extended itself to content people so that they can present their web-based apps so conveniently on the iPhone.  Remember The Milk is swell on the iPhone.  LinkedIn really works great on the iPhone and I'm sure both of these "applications" for the iPhone (really just a different html frontend) was easy to develop.  Good work here.   

5.  And I want more.  I'm impatient when I find something that hasn't be customized for my iPhone.  I want someone to write a frontend to LiveJournal Righ Now so I can more easily keep up with my friends there.   I want Wells Fargo to make it just a little bit easier for me to bank over my iPhone (as long as there isn't a trade off with security).  And I'd like some more device-to-device appls like I had on my Palm that lets me share things more easily with other iPhones.  (But suspect that DRM worries prevent this.)  And I want a ton of peer-to-peer Wi-Fi enabled location-based apps that I can't even imagine right now but fully anticipate some Smart Young Thing is already hard at work on.   

I took my time moving from the Treo to the iPhone and I'm glad I waited for the 3G to arrive before I got in line.  And I'm very glad I didn't wait  any longer.  Very Pleased. 

LEADING INDUSTRY ANALYST SAYS HEALTHCARE, RETAIL AND MANUFACTURING BENEFIT FROM VOICE OVER WIRELESS NETWORKS

Trapeze Networks Webcast Stresses Importance
Of Coverage, Density, Resiliency and Performance

 

PLEASANTON, Calif., September 15, 2008 – Trapeze Networks is hosting a webcast featuring Michael J. King, a research director at Gartner, an industry analyst firm. King presents his new findings in a webcast entitled Deployment Considerations for Voice over Wireless LANs. Trapeze Networks, a leader in wireless networking, and Polycom, a leader in collaborative applications for voice, video and data, is hosting the webcast and making it available to everyone interested in wireless voice services for their organizations. The webcast can be viewed here.

 

“Trapeze Networks is uniquely positioned to help companies get the benefits of wireless voice,” said Ahmet Tuncay, executive vice president of product management and business development. “Nonstop Wireless Networking differentiates Trapeze Networks from all its competitors. Most data applications don’t mind bits that arrive late or out of sequence as long as they all arrive at their destination sooner or later. But voice applications, and for that matter video too, demand that the signal be transmitted without interruption and Trapeze Networks does that better than any other WLAN company.”

 

Since its introduction earlier this year, Trapeze Networks has earned praise from the media and industry analysts for Nonstop Wireless. Network World, the leading trade magazine for the data networking marketplace, named Trapeze Networks a “blue ribbon winner” for its 802.11n product line. Trapeze Networks’ Nonstop Wireless networking was singled out from every other WLAN vendor for its high-availability architecture.

 

The Network World article reported on the findings of recent research performed by ABI Research. In its report, ABI Research wrote this:

 

Trapeze edges out its competitors with respect to resilience and high availability. The company’s “Non-Stop Wireless” is more than a slogan. Its use of virtual cluster controller functionality is highly innovative. Each controller contributes capacity resources to a community of controllers; and that means no impact on sessions should a controller go down. It also means that content is balanced automatically if a controller ceases operation.

 

In addition to the accolades Trapeze Networks has received from ABI Research, Current Analysis wrote this:

 

Customers of other WLAN vendors should consider Trapeze when looking to upgrade the existing WLAN. …Trapeze pulls out all the stops for its NonStop Wireless strategy.

 

About Trapeze Networks

Trapeze Networks, a Belden brand, is a leading provider of enterprise wireless LAN equipment and management software. Trapeze was the first company to introduce NonStop Wireless - delivering unmatched reliability to the enterprise wireless LAN and its solutions are optimized for companies requiring mobility and high bandwidth such as healthcare, education, and hospitality. Trapeze delivers Smart Mobile™ providing scalable wireless LANs for applications such as Voice over Wi-Fi, location services, and indoor/outdoor connectivity.

 

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The Guardian, 9.6.8: You can't help being what you write

After 40 years, the problem remains, each time. You can't start writing until you know what you're doing, and you don't know what you're doing until you start writing. I still have to resist the false intuition that I need to know as much as possible in advance. The essential thing is to know as little as possible. Ideally, when things fall out well, you shouldn't feel clever, you should feel lucky.

Highly recommended. 

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Ambient Awareness: Get It.

The New York Times holds a special spot on the menu of my media diet.  It occupies the type of media that I read because it is what it is.  It has a topology that turns inward on itself but nevertheless reaches out and illuminates Other Things.  I enjoy reading the NY Times, and I'm also obliged to read the NYTimes as it is essential to whatever it is that I do.  But I never really turn the pages expecting to be Profoundly Enlightened about the new worlds of technology / society where I go spelunking.   This past Sunday, September 7, was different. 

Mr. Clive Thompson has discovered another country and showed us part of a map.  It isn't so much that he discovered that more of us are keeping up with more of us in novel ways.  Thousands of people on LiveJournal knew this ages ago.  Rather, Mr. Thompson gives us a latitude and longitude, the coordinates of the place.  Many years back, William Gibson defined virtual reality as where one is when one is speaking to someone else on the telephone and this is surely the truth.  Mr. Thompson gives us ambient awareness, the particular knowing we have of individuals, near and far, we arrive at through the glimpses we receive through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.  --Thank you. 

I strongly suggest you read the article.  It starts off a bit slow, but ride it out. 

This is getting freakish

Just received another email from Hillary and it sets my mind to work trying to remember why my relationship with Hillary is beginning to feel so familiar.  And then it all comes back...

The summer between my sophomore and junior year.  I'm going to summer school, as usual because who really wants to spend the summer at home in Arkansas.  I've got a good part-time tutoring gig with the athletic department, a stool at the local bar and a cue behind the counter at the pool hall.  I'm taking some graduate level English classes and living off campus in a wonderful derelict house across the street from the food co-op.  Life is good.

I spot someone in one of my classes and she's very quiet and very cute and I like that type.  One thing leads to another and we go out to see Heaven's Gate and then have a cocktail and it becomes very clear very quickly that she's as crazy as a loon -- and this is a permanent condition and not just a bad reaction to Michael Cimino's movie masterpiece.  A year earlier, insanity wouldn't have dissuaded me or dampened my affections.  There were periods of my life when I thought madness was kind of charming, but by this stage in my life I've come to grips with the fact that it is Very Unproductive so at the end of our evening together I've decided it's been an ok evening (I liked the movie) and our lives would continue headed in different directions.

Except they didn't. 

Of course she was in one of my classes so I couldn't exactly avoid her especially when she decided to sit next to me.  Then there were the casual invitations to head over to Bradey Commons after class to enjoy the air conditioning and study together and that seemed rather innocent, but I could tell that, through her madness, she didn't see it that way and I could feel myself being inexorably pulled ever deeper into her vortex.  --But we never went out on another date, I swear. 

She started popping by the house after shopping at the co-op.  Then, she started appearing there empty-handed of an excuse altogether.  I did the right thing and told her that we really weren't "seeing" each other and she seemed surprised by that.  She didn't take it well.  Neither did her room mate, who called me up to let me know this.  Neither did her mother back in Maryland.

So, now I'm still getting these emails from Hillary and from Maggie Williams and from Chelsea and I want to tell them, "Look:  we're just friends, ok?  I need some space to breathe."

Sometimes, late at night, I wake up convinced I've heard someone in the driveway and I picture her, after the bar's closed with a stomach full of bitterness.  She's standing in my front yard staring up at my window, thinking about how I'm probably going to vote for Obama and feeling fury rising in her throat. 

I never should have shown any interest, but it's too late now.