Last Call
5:40 PM -- A few things you should see before heading for the bar to watch the rest of your bracket fall to pieces:
- Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) goes to a tradeshow to talk about what it's going to be doing at an upcoming tradeshow.
- Deep Packet Iinspection is becoming the next technology carriers will abuse to provide "better service" while magically charging lots more money for services that they used to sell on a flat-rate, who-cares-how-much-you-use basis. Well, hey, their monopoly on the voice network is just about over. Who can blame them?
- Google cut 200 sales and marketing jobs. What will those folks do with their pets all day if they can't take them to work?
- Good news for you old-school TV watchers out there (who wouldn't be reading this blog, anyway, despite the gloriously large fonts we're using): The NTIA has some money to replace expired TV converter box coupons. See? Change has come to America.
- Service providers are going to love this: A new service called OnLive offers video games on demand and is capable of displaying beautiful graphic images and video, even on crappy consumer hardware. It does all the rendering in a cloud, which means it's magical. I wouldn't be surprised if unicorns were somehow involved. Anyway, when you look at even the most simplified description of how the service works, you see a big cloud in the middle where service providers are going to hide and take your wallet once you start enjoying yourselves.
- I'll end on this bombshell: Investigative reporter Mitch Wagner discovers that city governments are inward-looking, out-of-touch, and stodgy when it comes to social media. I should add that they're also understaffed, usually under-funded, and that I'd rather someone in the bowels of the city spend her days keeping my tap water on than setting up a Facebook fan page. Just sayin'...
