They plan to publish technical standards for the development community by early next year and any device that meets the minimum technical standard will be activated on the Verizon Wireless network.

Verizon is calling their new policy “any apps, any device”.

According to Verizon Wireless President and CEO Lowell McAdam:

“This is a transformation point in the 20-year history of mass market wireless devices one which we believe will set the table for the next level of innovation and growth.”

This could be good news for consumers and especially for iPhone users currently locked in contracts with At&T.

With a portion of the spectrum to be auctioned starting in January 2008, consumer groups and some U.S. lawmakers have called for the FCC to require wireless providers to open up their networks to outside devices and applications.

Technorati Tags: cellular phone, Verizon, wireless

Don Hopkins, the man responsible for the original multiplayer Unix port of the game, is also responsible for porting SimCity to the OLPC laptop platform.

According to Hopkins,

“The goal is to enable the open-source community to renovate SimCity and take it in new educational directions, by applying Seymour Papert’s ideas about constructionist education, Alan Kay’s ideas about interactive user interfaces and object-oriented programming, Ben Shneiderman’s ideas about direct manipulation and info visualization, and many exciting ideas about multiplayer games, blogging, storytelling, game mods, player created content, and lessons learned from World of WarCraft, The Sims, Spore, etc,”

SimCity can really be a great learning experience, and with the open source community and educators from around the world now behind the project I expect it will bring children many new fun and valuable educational experiences.

Technorati Tags: education, OLPC, puppy, SimCity, simulation

The narrative brings us from the times of catalogs and shelves to the revolution of links and universal ubiquitous information sources that is Web 2.0. We are the real links to information.

The first video of Wersch’s view of Web 2.0 is here.

Technorati Tags: information, markup, tags, Web 2.0

After an earlier report that HTC is building the phone with initial shipments set to hit by the “end of 2007″ and globally in 2008, now there is a new report confirming that HTC “will ship about 50,000 cellphones running on a mobile operating system made by Google by the end of this year.”

It would certainly be nice to have a new mobile device that can run gmail, gcal, gmaps and other Google web apps. Unfortunately it looks like the first batch of gPhones wouldn’t “be for sale”, rather, they’d be used exclusively by developers “to understand how the software works.”

Technorati Tags: gcal, gmaps, Google, gphone, Goggle web apps

The next episode of CSI:NY to be aired next Wednesday and known as CSI:NY does Second Life will see one of its characters Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) entering Second Life “to pursue a killer who has killed a Second Life user in a case of virtual stalking gone too far”.

According to Techcrunch,

CSI:NY fans will be encouraged to join Second Life and investigate the case by following a link on the CBS website. CSI:NY will have three options for CSI-related inworld activities. The first option will allow viewers to walk around virtual New York buildings and visit a CSI lab and play forensic games. The second option consists of a game called “Murder by Zuiker,” a unique murder plot which can be solved by users finding clues. The 100 people who come closest to solving the murder will win virtual gifts.

The big tie-in gives new users the ability to become CSI investigators, complete with field kit and tools, and are given a chance to interview suspects and to solve the murder featured in the actual CSI:NY episode. The episode itself will apparently end in a cliff-hanger with the solution not revealed until February.

Amazing! It should be a lot of fun.

Technorati Tags: CBS, CSI:NY, Second Life, social network

At Princeton 40 percent of students and faculty are currently using a Mac as their personal computer as compared to only 10% of Mac users on campus 4 years ago . A similar trend is seen at many other colleges: Dartmouth is up to 55% freshman with Macs (up from 30% in 2005), University of Virginia with 20% of freshman with Macs (up from 17% in 2006), and Cornell with 21% dorm network users with a Mac (up from 5% between 2000-2002).
The reasons for increased Mac sales appear to be the popularity of the iPod, security of Mac OS X, design and ease of use.